Since First I Heard the Footsteps of Thy Soul
by Catheryne
Summary: Chuck/Blair. Carter/Blair. Loving as much as he loved her—-that should be illegal. It only made them victims; sometimes it made them criminals.
1. Chapter 1

**Since First I Heard the Footsteps of Thy Soul**

**AN: **It was bound to happen sooner or later. This was not even in my plans. I thought of this while in the taxi ride home and could not sleep until I posted. Title is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This time, I would say, the theme is pretty much like the sonnet itself. As always, my friends, be forewarned—themes, situations etc are not for everyone. You should only be so brave and patient as to wander inside whenever I start using sonnet lines are titles.

**Pairing: **Chuck/Blair

**Rating: **PG13

**Summary: **

**Part 1**

What is the true measure of a man?

He had asked himself the question more times than he could count. In the last year. In the last month. In the last week. In the last few hours.

They said the brain was a powerful being, a rational thing, a sympathetic creature. They said the brain could wipe away memories so ugly, so horrifying. The brain tended to do so to keep its owner sane.

It went to show then that his own brain abhorred him. It was the only possible reason for it. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw it.

The blood gathered around her, seeping darkly into the carpet. It would not stop, pooled like mercury under her body, taunting him. His brain, traitor that he was, showed him the memories late at night while he lay in his own bed. His blissful bed, where no one else could ever come near.

Was it in the brave and stoic face he would have in the face of death?

Chuck Bass stepped inside the suite, stopped right at the doorway. The moment he looked up, the photograph mocked him, and he turned his eyes away.

"_Bass."_

_He raised his gaze from the pavement to Blair's curious eyes as she approached him. "Took you long enough," he drawled with an arrogant tilt of his head. He was not certain how well his mask worked. He leaned against the limo because his legs would not hold him up._

_If she could see herself forgiving him one day into the future, no matter how long it would take, he would wait for her. If she could see herself forgiving him, if there was a chance, no matter how slim, she would come to him. _

_She stopped three feet away from him. "Was the waiting intolerable?"_

_She wanted him to say yes, needed him to say yes. She had to know that he needed her there. Slowly, he nodded his head. "But you know by now I'd wait forever for you, Waldorf," he told her._

_His response elicited just the reaction he predicted. Blair drew in her breath sharply. Her eyes glittered, and he knew it was from the memory of the night before, when he had come to her with his soul bare before her, naked like he had never been naked before._

_He lifted his hands, and her eyes fell for the first time to the bouquet of pink roses and the gifts he had brought for her. She loved presents, and even so she frowned, did not reach for them. "You think gifts and flowers can make me forgive you."_

"_I think you've already forgiven me," he told her, and this time, despite the words there was no trace of arrogance in his voice._

_She lowered her lashes, reluctantly she reached for one gift-wrapped box. The tape holding the wrapper closed was uneven. He had walked past the store employees offering to wrap it up for him, and spent the morning mulling over his approach while he sat on his bed and struggled with the glossy white and pink paper._

"_Because you told me you'd stand by me through the darkest, and the worst."_

_She bit her lip, blinked at the box he handed her, then hugged the gift to her chest. It was not so much the present, he thought. Not so much the gift, but the moment that she embraced. _

"_And between the two of us, you're the honest one," he reminded her gently. She had never lied to anyone but herself, to her parents. About the two of them, about what they shared, she had been open and honest to the breakpoint. He stepped closer, then said, "I know you forgive me before I even said I'm sorry."_

_She looked up at him, so close to her now she could almost touch him._

"_So I'm sorry," he said firmly._

"_If you already know, then why are you apologizing?" she whispered. "I don't have to forgive you if I've already forgiven you."_

_He took another step forward, and he could almost breathe her in. "Because," he reasoned, "I'm sorry."_

_And she nodded, showing him she accepted his words, taking them as a promise._

"_I'm sorry it took me so long to say I love you," he continued with a smile._

_Her eyes flew up to his, and he saw the wild surprise on her face. She took in the smile, the slick-backed hair, the bright, respectable clothes. He looked almost like he did when he came to apologize for Tuscany, bearing his bright yellow flowers that ended up in the trash._

"_I know you love me," he told her._

_And still she stood her ground. "How do you know I haven't stopped? You were a Basstard, Chuck."_

_Even the word she used to malign him was uttered so gently, he wondered if she heard herself, if she would even ask the question again. He stepped forward, and did not retreat. He pressed against her and he looked down at her, so close to him, that he only needed to whisper for her to hear. "Because if you love me half—no, a quarter—as much as I love you, that would be impossible."_

_A short gasp, and then she was laughing. It was absurd, but he was grinning too. She threw her arms around his neck, and he wrapped his arms around her as they met in a kiss as they laughed._

His brain was a traitor, never more so than when it flooded him with memories of joy he could never recapture. He strode into the room, stood right in front of the portrait that hung on the wall. She smiled from within the circle of his arms, leaning back against his chest, bordered by the gleaming silver frame.

Chuck reached up and tore the frame from the wall, then tossed it facedown inside his drawer.

"What the hell am I doing?" he muttered.

There he stood, surrounded by her, everything her. It was a carefree summer, and the suite had been heaven on earth.

"_Oh my God!" she squealed. "Catch me, Bass!"_

_He entered the suite to see her teetering on the chair, with a silver photo frame in her hand. Chuck ran towards her and caught her before she fell on her butt, before she could hurt herself._

"_My hero," she said, grinning in mock breathlessness._

_He grinned down at her, and smirked. "I'm a regular Superman, Waldorf."_

_She nodded, her eyes crinkling as she told him, "And I'm your kryptonite."_

_He agreed, pulled her closer, tighter against his chest. "Completely my kryptonite." He hefted her up higher in his arms, and she tightened her arms around his neck. The corner of the frame bit against his shoulder. "I'm not gonna let you fall, Blair."_

_She gestured towards the wall, where a screw was conspicuously embedded on what had been a pristine wall. He carried her there, and she reached up and hung the photo frame on the wall. "Like it?" she prompted._

_They looked like the perfect couple. It was the type of shot that was published in newspapers for wedding announcements. _

_Like a fairy tale._

"_A little conceited, don't you think?" he said teasingly._

_She grinned at him. "This way, anyone who enters this suite will know there's a lady of the house."_

"_Are you staking claim, Waldorf?"_

"_What do you think?" she parried._

"_I think you are." He nodded towards the picture. "Straighten it. It's a little askew."_

_She reached up and corrected the angle of the picture. "How's that?" _

_He did not answer, waited. She was impatient. She would turn. And when she did, the words tumbled out of his mouth. "Live with me."_

It was paradise.

Wonderful fodder for dreams. Perfect as nightmares.

A year later and he still stood in the unoccupied suite, could not bear to live there, could not bear to clear it out. He sat heavily on the edge of the couch, his gaze fixed on the lighter spot on the wall where he had taken off the photograph.

Chuck pulled himself up and walked towards the bedroom. He dragged himself to the bed and fell on his side. He closed his eyes.

_Her cheeks were wet, her eyes brimming, panicked, afraid. She cried out in pain, as he gripped her arms. He did not hear her, heard only Jack, saw only the picture that he painted. _

"_Chuck, no, please. Just listen to me, Chuck."_

_And he was crying, fucking crying worse than he did when his only remaining parent died unexpectedly, snatched from his world and sent him reeling into an abyss._

"_I'm sorry!" she sobbed_

_And even the sound of her voice, the apology rolling off her tongue, the words being coughed out from her lungs. Everything she said, she did, she appeared to be, gutted him from his throat to his belly. He wouldn't be surprised if he saw his insides splattered on the floor._

"_You don't get to cry," he rasped, pushing her back against the cold tiles of the restaurant bathroom. Outside, their friends and family gathered. Outside, Serena was the happiest she had been in her life. Outside, there were living a dream. And he ached to yell at them that the dream would lull them into a false sense of hope, and would shatter, cut at them with shards so sharp they would die before they bled. _

_She was a whore, and she betrayed him. She looked up into his eyes and told him he was the only one, told him he was her life._

"_Stop crying!" he spat out. He hated her, and still he was hard for her, aching for her. _

_Her tears fell to the dark awning under her collar, and all he could do was grab at her breasts, push them together and bury his face in oblivion. Almost immediately, she buried her fingers in his hair, pulling his head closer._

_The sensation was always, from her, better than the last. He moaned deep in his throat. In revenge, for making him remember the pleasure, he suckled on the side of breast, grated his teeth against her nipples until she cried out and released his hair, gripped his shoulders._

"_I love you," she whispered, like it would solve everything, absolve everyone._

_He looked up at her, and he saw the reflection on her eyes. His devastated face. In response, he mouthed, "Fuck you, bitch."_

_Chuck grabbed her thighs, tore off the flimsy scrap of lace that pretended to be her underwear. Her cream confection of a gown lifted easily. He flinched when she laid her head on his shoulder, and peppered soft kisses in the crook of his neck. "I love you," she whispered. He freed himself, roughly pushed inside her, slamming her lower back onto the tiled wall behind her. Blair tightened her arms around him. He moved faster, pumped harder. And he felt her fingers gently playing at his nape, soothing him. "It's okay. I love you."_

_And fuck her, she meant to say she forgave him._

_He didn't do anything wrong. She was the one who broke him into a million pieces._

_And her tongue swirled in his ear even while his hips slammed against hers. Her hands lowered, and slid into his shirt, holding on to the bare skin of her back, her fingers splayed wide, touching as much of him as she could. "If this is the last time," she whispered. "I'm sorry."_

_He was intent, punishing himself every time he entered her. "Shut up!"_

_She threw her head back, groaning at the sensations of him driving inside her. She laid her left hand on his chest, and Chuck glared down, saw the glittering diamond on her finger. His heart clenched at the sight. He slapped one hand over hers. The diamond blinded him._

_She came with a muffled scream, and clenched tightly around him he felt himself tighten. He pulled out and let his seed spurt over her thighs and her dress._

_Blair reached for some toilet paper, and wiped the mess away. She drew out more toilet paper, then reached for him. He flinched away from her, then zipped up. "I don't want to see you again. Never again."_

_He walked away from her, out of the restaurant and towards the grand flight of stairs and that descended into the hotel ballroom. Down below, there was a love song played by the band. It was a banal rhythm, so unsuitable for the end. Everything until then had been crisp and alive, everything she was had been more than he needed._

_Here lies Chuck Bass. Killed by perfection._

_Loving as much as he loved her—that should be illegal. It only made them victims; sometimes it made them criminals._

"_Please stop!" she called from behind him._

_He stopped at the top of the steps._

"_Don't," she pleaded._

"_I'm leaving. For Monaco. For Bangkok. For Cairo. Wherever. I want you gone by the time I come back."_

"_Chuck, talk to me. I know you still love me."_

_Damn her for using it against him. She knew, as well as he did, he wouldn't ever stop. Not even for this. Because he loved her, not twice, not thrice, not even a hundred times more than she loved him._

"_And that's too bad," he growled. He jerked his head towards the restaurant. "Nate's there. Try fucking up his life next. He'll let you do it too."_

"_Chuck, please." She reached for him, just when he turned to her. He met her eyes, for that one unending second when everything froze. She caught air when he moved, and Chuck's eyes widened as he realized what had happened. _

_Catch me, she had said to him once._

_He reached out his hands, and his fingertips brushed hers. Chuck watched in horror as she stumbled on the top step, and in a mass of pale satin and chiffon made for a spectacular sight, and he was frozen at the sight of limbs and skin and hair as she hit each step of the long hotel staircase._

_He stared down in horror at the twisted body on the landing, where she had stopped falling halfway down where the staircase curved. Underneath her the blood pooled under her hips, under her head._

_And then there were people, all around him, all around her. And even then all he could see was blood. So much of it. So much he knew he died._

_And then the woman's voice, accusing, firm. He did not recognize her. He did not recognize anyone at the time. The only thing he could see was the crumpled form._

_Later Lily would tell him it had been Eleanor._

"_What did you do to her?"_

He woke up with a start, gasping, sweating. He shuddered. He was hot, and so cold. They said hell was fire and death was cold, so he was sure he died that night and was burning where he belonged.

It had been two years. It was time to forget it. And still his treacherous brain would not let him. It snuck in the dead of the night, or every time his mind wandered. And sometimes, it was not even his brain. He opened his drawer and drew out the frame. Sometimes, it was everything else.

He hung the photograph back on the wall, covering the blank space that had discolored over time.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped off the smudges of the silver that his fingerprints made. His thumb hovered over the glass, and very lightly, he touched her smile.

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: **I love all of you for showing your support. Whenever I start a new fic, I always really try to see what you thought. Anyway, I had to post another part of this quickly so I don't lose the idea. Tomorrow, promise, Heaven in Your Embrace or Mr and Mrs Bass. For now, do let me know what you think of this. And yeah, be openminded.

**Part 2**

There comes a time in the life of any man when fate catches up with him unaware, and he would sink, swim, or sway by an unseen hand's command. In all his years, he had been fortunate that the day seemed unable to catch up to him. He traveled the world, jumped from island to island and lived life high on everything old people said was bad, and everything he thought was so pleasurably good.

In all the years of his life he had done perhaps two kind things, and so every night for the past year he woke up with a start and reached for the space beside him on the bed. And his heart would be cold and distant, aloof to his head, guarded in case she was not there. Most nights when he felt her body lying beside his he calmed.

There comes a time in a man's life when fate catches up to him and gives him a gift so wonderful he wonders if it's all part of one grand nightmare that ended with him waking up alone.

With the gift as generous as the one he received, it stood to reason that he would work to deserve it. One breath at a time, he turned his life around.

Even the world, that previously held an incomparable allure, had lost much in his eyes. In front of the sweeping majesty of China, all he could think about was coming home.

He made his way through the throng of people that deplaned, and strode towards the escalators with quick purposeful steps. He searched for the familiar head in the crowd below, and when he spotted her, looking up at him and waving, his heart stopped. It always stopped now whenever she smiled. She mouthed words to him, and even from afar he could almost hear her voice.

Welcome home.

He pushed through the people in front of him on the escalator, and made his way through. The few seconds of delay were equivalent to centuries away from her. At the sight of him fighting his way through the crowd, she grinned. In return for his effort she walked over to him to meet him part of the way. He hefted his knapsack onto his shoulder and approached her.

And God, he couldn't wipe the grin from his face.

"Hello, beautiful," he greeted softly as he looked down at her smiling eyes. He placed his hands on her waist and gently pulled her close. He dropped a kiss on her forehead. Her lips curved. "No more trips alone," he said, dipping his head down to kiss her.

It had been an experiment, she said. Until the first minute passed on the plane when he remembered Frankenstein's monster was a product of an experiment.

"How was Beijing?" she breathed when their lips parted.

"Gorgeous," he told her. "But it was nothing compared to you."

Her lips curved. "Flatterer."

"How was New Zealand?"

"Green," she said casually.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and walked with her out of the airport. She laid her head on his shoulder. It took a moment, but he buried his nose in her hair and breathed in. "Did you miss me?"

She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling. "Did you miss me?" she returned.

Someday she would be able to answer the question just as he asked. Someday she would not need to throw it back. Someday, when he was worth it, when she acknowledged it.

"I missed you like I was detoxing." He grinned. He jumped onto a rusty train and almost missed the handlebar, and when he stared down the rough rocky road that almost scraped off his face, he thought of her. "Sweating and trembling and completely losing my mind."

"Then," she said primly, "I missed you too."

She stepped away, and his arm fell from around her waist to his side. "Blair," he said. "Where are you going?"

She turned around and grinned at him. "We've got to beat everyone else to the line, or else we won't be able to get a cab."

He shook his head and yelled at her, "I can call for a car!" When she did not stop, he hurried after her.

She arched an eyebrow at him. She admired many things about him—things she used to hate. "You're not spoiled, Carter," she pointed out. "You can ride a cab."

He had ridden camels in Egypt. The hump on the back hurt his groin. He had ridden sitting atop a rusty jeepney maneuvering a hillside in the Philippines, and had stared down the drop to a rocky river below because the roads were so narrow.

"I can ride a cab," he affirmed.

Hell, he had traveled from Dubai to Istanbul to Zagreb to Monaco with next to nothing. If his parents abhorred anything about the way he lived his life, it certainly was not because he drained their bank accounts. He would survive on his wits, and by his wits he had kept for himself the piece of heaven he would have lost much earlier if he had been ignorant.

"Good."

He licked his lips, then caught her wrist. "Slow down," he whispered into her ear. "No one's chasing you."

She started at the words. Her eyes flew up to him. Her lips, still moist from their kiss, parted slightly. "Right," she said softly.

He walked with her to the line, and stood behind her, resting his chin on the top of her head as they waited. The line moved slowly, and it was irritating, almost impossible. There were a million cabs waiting on the line. Any other time he would have cut in, or yelled for the tourists to get their asses in gear.

"Was the Great Wall really that amazing like in all the pictures?" she asked.

Was it?

"It was spectacular," he answered. "You can see it from the space."

She turned in his arms. He straightened, and looked down to see what he had been waiting to see, what she had deliberately kept him from seeing. He took her chin between his fingers and raised her face so he could meet her eyes. She averted her gaze. He turned her face again.

No words. And yet he told her everything she needed to hear.

She closed her eyes, then leaned forward, almost like she was letting herself fall. And he was there to fall against. He wrapped his arms around her and just stood. The line in front of them moved, and he remained in place. Carter looked up beyond the line of cabs, and saw a small group of girls in their late teens holding up their weapons of choice. He fixed them a stare, made sure their damned camera phones would capture the image with him looking straight into the lens.

No backing down. No scurrying away. He had one audience for the look, and the result would have been in the making since they were younger.

She was in his arms now, and they were back in New York City where they belonged. And maybe he had changed, little by little, breath by breath, to make himself more suitable for her. She never asked, never demanded. But every time he did something well, she thanked him with a touch, or a brush, or a squeeze. He had no doubt by the time he was thirty he would be a model citizen.

"It's our turn," he said quietly.

She raised her head, blinked up at the line that had vanished in front of them. She walked forward, then reached behind her to tangle her hand in his. He opened the door for her, then climbed in after her. Carter have the driver the address of the Baizen townhouse, and glanced at her to see her looking out the window.

Old familiar places.

He placed a hand on her thigh, waited for her to turn to him.

It took ages. Always, it took her ages to look. Sometimes he wondered if in the delay she cheated, and when her lashes lowered each time, she imagined it was someone else's hand. And he lashed out the only way he knew, because for her, the gentle tone was worse than violence.

He made her listen to his voice, caressing in a manner that Chuck Bass' certainly had not. "It's good to be home," he said. And the wealth of secrets behind the words throbbed from every syllable.

"_Help me find her," said the man in front of him. Carter looked up from his scotch glass and assessed Chuck Bass, whose hands gripped the bar as he leaned heavily forward. Chuck turned to him and demanded, "Leave no rock unturned."_

_The man had flaunted his happiness in front of New York City for so long that seeing him shattered was only so much delight. Carter furrowed his brows. "Why do you need me? Don't you have an army of PIs on retainer?"_

_Within their circles, everyone knew. The police had no evidence. There had been no witnesses. Apart from what now was legendary—Eleanor Rose's accusation sweeping across the hotel—there had been no reason for Chuck to stay free. Carter had stood yards away, watched coolly, detached._

_But he had seen the blood. Knew the blood was more than the head trauma. Watched Chuck the exact moment that the hotel doctor, who rushed to give first aid, said the crisp words to Eleanor Rose._

"_How far along?" Eleanor whispered._

_Serena had been a sight in her bridal gown when she rushed from the restaurant and flew down the steps in her heels. It had been the bride who offered, "Two months."_

Carter had been there when Eleanor swore that Chuck Bass would never see her daughter again. Carter had been there when the paramedics arrived to take Blair.

Then, despite one wild drunken night, she had been nothing more than a stranger.

"Is it?" she whispered.

He was here. 'But so am I,' he wanted to say.

But they had survived so long with one simple rule.

Never Chuck Bass.

Never say it; never think it.

Never remember.

"_Because I don't know anyone else who can hide in the world as well as you can," Chuck told him._

_Carter wondered how much saliva the guy had to swallow to say the words. "Are you asking me for a favor?" he drawled back. _

_In truth, he hated the kid. He always held such disdain for the likes of him. Born rich. Bred rich. Entitlement oozed from his pores. Him and his friends, all of them. People like them were why he ditched his inheritance and traveled the world._

"_Yes," Chuck managed._

_Chuck Bass had never looked more like poor little rich boy than he did then._

_But he was a poor little rich boy who owned billions worth in property and businesses. He could always vacation in Chiang Mai for three full months with the smallest amount. And so he asked, "What's in it for me?"_

Carter released her thigh, then reached behind him and hefted his backpack to his lap. She watched him with curious eyes, mostly to occupy her time. He glanced out the glass window and saw that they were passing by the Palace. He unzipped the pocket and reached for something inside.

"I have a gift for you."

He slowly drew out his hand, and hers flew to push it back inside the backpack pocket. "I hate gifts," she said.

Serena had rattled off enough during the debutante ball for him to know Blair Waldorf lived for presents. "It's a really small one," he assured her, but she gripped his wrist and shook her head. "When I saw it on the path I thought of you."

"No gifts, Carter," she reminded him.

No flowers, he remembered. It was a small dried hyacinth, pressed inside his small phrase pocketbook. Someday when she acknowledged he was worth it, she would let him give her his sad gesture. He hoped the hyacinth hadn't crumbled by then.

_Paris. Milan. London._

_Carter Baizen had scoured the places he had been certain she would be in. He had turned up outside her father's villa asking about her, and was invited inside for tea. The two men—and he wished Chuck Bass had given him a heads up that Harold was living with a gay male model—had been wary in speaking with him. When he denied knowing Chuck, the two seemed more open to share._

"_We have no idea where she is," Roman told him. _

"_No calls?" Carter prodded. "No request to wire her money?" _

_He felt Harold's eyes on him, measuring him, weighing him. Against his better judgment, Carter sat up straight. _

"_Why do you want to know?" asked her father._

_Four months of searching for her, and really, it was no lie to say, "Because I want to find her."_

_Harold handed him a postcard, and Carter held in his hands the miniature picture of little white huts running down the shoreline beside a deep blue ocean. Venus statues paved a walkway to arching cypress trees. _

"_Oedo island," he recognized. "She's in South Korea."_

_When he had first kissed Blair Waldorf, her lips had been wet with martini, but they parted underneath his like surrender. The first time he ran his thumb under her eyes, his skin came away wet with tears. Back then he had been nothing, exactly the man he was trying to grow out of. But she had been beautiful and vulnerable and he had been Carter—no more than Carter._

_The first time he had sex with Blair Waldorf, she had been trying to bury part of herself, and he had wanted nothing more than to fuck Snow White. She had been a legend, and the night had been sloppy and inelegant. _

_But looking at the postcard, turning it over and seeing her name scrawled at the back, the uninteresting night grew clearer in his brain. _

"_South Korea," Harold repeated. "That's a long way from here."_

_Carter's lips curved. "Just so happens I was on my way there."_

"_Does it?"_

"_Do you need me to bring her anything?" _

"_Send her my love," said her father._

_Within two days, Carter Baizen stood in the center of a garden, surrounded by trees heavy with snow. Around him, the ground was white. To the right was a frozen pond. She sat on the edge, with her boots gingerly treading on the thin ice. She edged forward, like she was testing her weight. He walked towards her slowly, close enough that he could see the puffs of air as she breathed._

_Her gloves slid on the icy seat. He reached out quickly and grabbed her by the arms._

"_Careful. You don't want to fall."_

_She closed her eyes, and let him pull her back up firmly on the seat. That was the first time he noticed that she delayed facing him. Finally, with snowdust on her lashes, she blinked up at him. "Carter?" she said in disbelief._

"_Hello, beautiful."_

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: **This is the point when I know I will lose many of you. But if you have been with me this past half year since I started in this fandom, you will know that I will still write what I think will scare a lot of you away. For those who are leaving, I'll see you in Mr and Mrs Bass LOL

**Part 3**

_It was a day that marked the end of a chapter in their lives that they would forever remember. At the back of the limo, riding to the start of something new. He turned to her with a smile, and she glanced down at where she felt his wrap around hers. She smiled briefly and squeezed back._

"_Nervous?" he asked._

_But she was wearing her mother's creation—a high-waisted skirt and a loose blouse that finally told her that her mother understood who she was—on the way to her graduation day, riding at the back of the limo where everything exploded—not began—beside the one person she loved. She thanked the twisted fate that brought her to this point, when there was no Yale in the horizon, no black and white future already written. All she knew was she would live with him, eat with him, sleep beside him. Exist. Every day. Every day with Chuck. She would never live another minute without him._

"_Ecstatic," she answered. Blair leaned forward and pressed her body to his. With the hand not in his she took a folded slip of paper from her pocket. As she slipped it into his jacket pocket, she met his eyes. Always, when she was this near him, her lips would part in invitation. It was an invitation that he always took, much to her satisfaction. _

_He kissed her, and her eyes fluttered closed. When he kissed her it was like there was no need to breathe. He breathed for them, and she was fine as long as he was close._

"_I just realized," she whispered when their mouths parted, "that for the first time in my life, I have nothing planned. There's nothing at all in the future except for you." _

_She opened her eyes to see his smirk. He was smug, and she loved that he could be so confident about them. With his forehead against hers, he asked her, "Doesn't it feel good, Blair?" And if she were younger she would have had an outburst of denial. Instead, she nodded. He continued, "Let yourself loose. You're free. We're starting with a clean slate."_

_No more Nate. No more Jack. No Carter. None of his multitude of women. Her mother's words from long ago, the ones that always made her feel inadequate could be forgotten. The ghost of Bart Bass no longer haunted him._

"_Now it's just you and me," he told her._

Blair Waldorf looked up and saw his reflection in the mirror. When he noticed her looking, he gave her a half-cocked smile that was now endearing. She returned his smile with one of her own. He did not walk up to her until she gave one brief nod.

Her permission.

He stood behind her while she sat in front of the dresser in the Baizen guestroom. When Carter placed his hands on her shoulders, she rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand.

"The guests have started to arrive," he told her.

She nodded, then reached for her bottle of perfume. She tipped the bottle to moisten her wrists. Carter took it from her hand, then upended it on his fingers. Very slowly, he drew circles behind her ears. His finger crawled to dip under her dress, and crept to the halo between her breasts. "Carter, you're going to smell like my perfume," she protested.

He leaned over her, and she felt his breath against her ear. "I can't think of a better scent on me than yours."

The words, the look in his eyes as she saw him in the mirror, his touch on her skin. He was there. Always there. He was more than anyone who made promises to stay but never did. She turned in her seat and grasped the front of his suit, pulled him down so that she could kiss him. Carter knelt in front of her, and she placed her arms on his shoulders. She parted her legs so he could press closer, with her heat against his stomach. He cleared his throat and shifted on his knees.

"Will you be okay tonight?"

Her smile was strained, she knew, when she responded. "Why wouldn't I be? It's a chance to reconnect. I haven't seen Serena in ages."

He kissed her jaw. "I wanted to make sure." His hand rested on her thigh, and slowly moved up and down. Like he was soothing her. Like she was a panicked kitten. And there was absolutely no need. She was good. She was recovered.

"_I'm not a cure," he said._

_Blair looked up from the secondhand book she was reading, and saw Carter with his eyes closed, his head leaned back against the back of the train seat. She waited for him to say more. When he did not, she opened her mouth to respond, but thought better of it. She flipped the page and read the next words._

_She glanced out the window at the rapidly moving scenery. Forests and mountains at night. From Bangkok to Laos, with Carter Baizen shifting on his seat in their second class cabin—it was the farthest thing in her mind in that other life. In that other life she had, there was only one constant._

_And that was not the face she was looking at then._

_Blair lifted up her feet on the seat and returned to her reading._

"_Did you hear me, Blair?"_

_This time, when she lifted her eyes to him, she saw him watching her. He looked at her as if she were pieces of a puzzle that he needed to put back together. "I heard you," she answered. It would be easy to deny that she had any idea what he meant. Instead, she said, "I don't need a cure."_

_She noticed the tick in his jaw as he stared at her. His gaze shifted to her wrist. She dropped her book and traced the line, very faint now, almost unnoticeable._

"_How many countries do we have left?" she asked softly._

"_Too many to count," he answered._

_She nodded, then picked up her book again and settled in to read. She flipped through pages feeling his eyes on her. Finally, she looked up and saw that he had fallen asleep, his neck twisted some in his attempt to find a comfortable position. She rose from her seat and picked up the thin blanket they had been provided and shook it to cover Carter's form._

"He'll be here."

Him.

The unnamed him.

The him he was never supposed to mention.

And it was like lightning had charged into her body. She dove into his arms. She kissed him. "I need you," she said against his mouth.

Carter dipped his lips to the crook of her neck. She threw back her head, then reached behind her for her zipper. He caught her hands in his and shook his head. "The guests are here, Blair."

"Please," she said, her voice broken.

"We're expected downstairs."

"We've lived our lives without them just fine," she said, batting her lashes at him. "Just a quick one."

He assessed her with liquid blue eyes, and then shook his head. He dropped a kiss on the corner of her lips. "No quick ones. You did say I know how to please a woman."

She pushed away from him and stood up stiffly.

He was so eager to face the Upper East Side, and she wanted to call him out on it. They were fine; they were alright away from this. She had never wanted to come back, never wanted to see the familiar streets. Life was better sleeping in one country only to wake up in another. They were doing well. As long as they were away from New York, they would be perfect.

"Just go, Carter. I'll follow." And then he was on her, wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. "What else do you want?" she asked, her voice cold.

He sighed. Blair knew defeat when she saw one, and she was so familiar with it in his eyes that she recognized it at once. His arms unraveled from her waist, and his hands spread down to grasp her hips. She felt him harden against her ass.

"Because I love you," he said easily.

She nodded, sucking in her breath when he reached down and pulled down her panties. "I need you," she responded. Blair turned her head to look down at him.

She pulled him with her towards the bed. She lay down, and he settled on top of her, lifting up her gown to give him access. His mouth was hot, was warm, was now familiar. He dipped his tongue in the hollow of her throat.

She closed her eyes. When he entered her, she released a breath and smiled.

_It was as if his eyes lit up. She sat back in her seat, far away from him at the back row. Their names were so far apart it was impossible to sit through the entire ceremony. But she did see, from the side of Constance, the profile of his face._

_Knew exactly when he saw her note._

'_The face of all the world is changed since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul.'_

_He craned his neck and when he saw her, he gave her a look that told her there would be no rest that night. _

_When she first read it in eighth grade, and learned that it had been written by a poetess about her husband, and explored the rest of the sonnets of the book, she had thought them impossible. And she had been a romantic. But love like that—it did not exist. _

_Until she woke up that morning and stretched, then noticed Chuck lying out her clothes for graduation on the space in the bed that he had vacated._

"_You're awake."_

_She nodded, and he immediately leaned close for a kiss. She pursed her lips, because she had only just woken up, hadn't had time to brush her teeth. Pursing her lips did not work, and his tongue and mouth were persistent._

"_Chuck—"_

"_There are no words, Blair," he said._

_There were no words. She had aced every exam in the book, and there was no way anything could encompass how much she loved him. But she swore she would find the words._

_When she did, stolen from a book that had never been intended for publication, she scribbled them on a piece of paper to give him. And the sonnet, or the circumstance, would have, she acknowledged, not mattered or made sense to him. But she had sworn he would know._

_The moment graduation was over, she was the first one he went to. Her lips curved as he approached holding the slip of paper. And she flushed, suddenly embarrassed. _

_It was not them._

_But sometimes, when he looked at her, it almost seemed like it was._

"_Forget I gave you that," she stammered, and moved to reach for the slip of paper._

_He had a self-satisfied look on his face. He caught her by her waist and asked, "Why would I?"_

"_Chuck, don't. It wouldn't make sense to you."_

_And he held her close. She swore he could hear the way her heart beat rapidly. Her parents were waiting for her, and Serena's family waited for him. He leaned down, and said to her, "Of course it was. I may have sometimes paid a certain group to take my exams for me, but I'm not illiterate, Blair."_

_She released her breath, looked at him uncertainly. _

"_You rocked my world too," he said, grinning._

_Her father waved to her from his spot beside Roman. She nodded and waved back. "I'll see you tonight," she told Chuck. _

_She turned to go to her family. He caught her hand and tugged her back towards him, and kissed her on the lips. "I love you."_

_The words fell over her, and she had to close her eyes for a beat. "I love you too," she responded._

It was as close to walking into your own dream.

Many of the Baizen guests turned when she walked into the party on Carter's arm. Many of the younger members were abuzz. It was almost as if no time had passed by. She glanced at her companion, and his face had taken on a cold, smug expression that she had not noticed on him for so long. While they roamed around the world, whenever he spoke to her, he was a different man.

She tightened her hold on his arm. Curiously, he turned to look at her. And right in front of her eyes, the ice in his blue eyes vanished.

"Am I still her?" she whispered.

And it was testament to where they were that he was able to answer. "You're still you."

Herself. Was it Blair from that other life? Or was she the Blair he had pieced back together?

He cupped her cheeks with both hands and pressed a kiss on her lips in front of everyone. "My father's calling me. I'll be right back."

She took a glass of champagne from one of the waiters. She waited in front of the full length windows. Blair watched from afar as Carter approached Mr Baizen. When Carter looked down on the floor, she willed him to raise his head. And he did, gave her a small wave.

And then there was this scent.

This presence.

And it was him.

Blair started to walk towards Carter when she heard the words, felt warm breath in her ear.

"Waldorf—"

She spoke immediately, "I will not listen to you," she warned, without even looking. "I don't want you near me."

"Let me explain."

"No," she said coldly. "Please leave me alone."

She shuddered at his lips against her ear. "You forgive me," he said. And then his lips were on the nape of her neck, and she almost sobbed out loud. "Because whatever they told you, you still love me."

She closed her eyes. "I'm begging you," she started. And even then, she could not say the name. "Please leave. Please."

The precise moment that he left, she knew. Without thinking, without looking, without checking.

It was just a little bit colder.

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: **Do remember to leave feedback, as I'm addicted to writing this story and really want to know what you think. Oh and, no need to request in the review to update Mr and Mrs Bass. Lol. It makes this story jealous.

**Part 4**

"_Chuck, I'm sorry. You shouldn't be here."_

_Chuck looked down in disbelief at Nate's hand on his chest, in one gesture to stay him. He scowled at his best friend, grabbed Nate's wrist and tossed it aside. He stepped forward, only to be blocked by Nate once again._

"_You don't want to cause a scene here," Nate told him._

_When Chuck surged forward, the door opened and shut too quickly for him to glance inside. Dan stood vanguard outside the door. The other man shook his head at Chuck. "Listen, Chuck. Serena sent me out here. You should go, man."_

"_They've kept me away for long enough. Let me talk to her. She's awake."_

"_Eleanor doesn't want you here."_

_Chuck glared at Nate. "I'm not here to see Eleanor. I'm here to see Blair."_

"_You should go."_

_Chuck's hands fisted, and he lunged for Dan. Nate gripped his friend's arm. "Dan, go back inside. I'll take care of it."_

_Dan shrugged and opened the door. Chuck took the opportunity to grip the doorway and take one look at Blair. Sitting on the bed, she was white as the sheets covering the mattress and the pillow. She was surrounded by people that were not him, and he knew that it was only him she needed._

"_Listen, Chuck," Nate began._

"_Archibald, I need to know how she is."_

"_I can't let you inside," Nate told him. _

"_Because of Eleanor?"_

_Nate sighed. "Blair doesn't want to see you."_

_Impossible. Had they not established it, over and over? There was nothing he could do that she would never forgive, nothing she could do that he would not. They loved so much that what Nate had said was impossible. _

"_Don't lie for them," Chuck burst out._

"_The doctor's inside. He's going to tell her about the baby."_

_It was what deflated him. Chuck paused and looked down at the floor. Nate took his silence as his agreement, and then opened the door to step back inside. Before he entered, he said, "I'll leave the door open a little so you can see her. But don't come inside, Chuck. It's for your own good."_

_And so he stood outside the door, peering through the slit on the door just for a glimpse of her. The doctor stood at the foot of the bed. _

"_Blair, you should know. It was impossible for the pregnancy to survive a fall like that," the doctor said quietly._

_From the distance between them even he could see the way Blair's fingers curled on top of the blanket. She needed someone to hold her hand, and no one out of the friends and family surrounding her could see it. _

"_In the future, you can still try. You're young…"_

_The doctor's words drifted off, and all he could hear was the hitch in her breathing. God, to hear her breathing from so far away. To hold her. To share her hell._

"_Mom," Blair gasped. Eleanor stepped forward, took her daughter in his arms, rocked her from side to side. "Mom, I need to leave."_

"_Whatever happened, sweetheart, you have to understand. He was angry," Eleanor said soothingly._

_And all the implications hung in the air above them._

"_He didn't mean to. I'm sure he'll apologize to you."_

_Blair shook her head. "No. No more. Don't let him near me again."_

Stories became legends; people became characters. To those who passed history from one person to the next, he owned the truth, held it at the tip of his tongue. Their story had been told so much that often, to Chuck Bass, it was as if his memory was wrong and everyone else's version was the truth.

That in fact, maybe, in his anger, in the jealous rage that possessed him, he had pushed her.

The words of the world were so powerful, often so consistent, that sometimes he dreamed that he had held her in his arms, tightly, then whispered goodbye. And she tearfully looked up at him, accepted his farewell. In his dreams he gripped her arms and gave her a feral growl, then threw her down the staircase.

Watched immobile as the blood spread around her like a red rose blossoming.

In the Upper East Side, it was the one story not even Gossip Girl dared to print. No matter how many believed its truth. It was a secret so scandalous no one would claim responsibility for it.

But the story went, and was told, and he—the character—had memorized every word.

The guests in Baizen's homecoming watched him, followed his movement with surreptitious glances. He met their eyes, because despite the way their truth infiltrated his dreams, he would stand by one thing only.

There was no moment, in that dark night where he thought to lash out at the world and punish her, that he would have raised a hand to her, that he would have hurt her.

"Chuck, why did you come here?"

He turned to his stepsister, who stood holding on to her husband's arm. Her eyes were uncertain, almost pitying. He despised it the way he despised Serena that night in the hospital.

"If any one of you there was a chance that I wouldn't come for her, then I'd ask you to share what you've been smoking. That's powerful stuff," he said snidely.

Serena stepped away from Dan, gripped Chuck's wrist and tugged, forcing him to turn his gaze up, to meet her eyes. "Stop being selfish," she snapped. "She's happy."

And it was the biggest lie. And it would not be a story to be retold until it was true to everyone. He could live with the other one. The world could believe him a criminal, but he would die before he would agree that Blair was happy in a life that did not include him.

"She will never be happy with anyone else," he said softly.

And fucking Serena's eyes pitied him. He pulled his arm away from her. Chuck strode away from her, pushed past the members of Society who were either to polite or too afraid to call him out. Like called by an unheard voice. He raised his gaze from the floor to the grand stairwell that the Baizen home boasted, and saw Blair making her way gingerly up the stairs.

Carter. That bastard.

For months Chuck had financed Baizen's trips, read curt updates that only told him over and over that she could not be found. The same useless updates that his own PIs had given. And then one day, after France, there was silence.

Now the bastard stood at the top step, a smile fixed on his lips. Blair—his Blair—looked at up at him as if he was the answer to all of her questions. She reached out her hand, which Baizen took at once. And then the man wrapped an arm around her waist, maneuvered them so he would be the one closer to the stairs. And it was Blair who pulled him down for a kiss. And like watching a bloodbath, his eyes were glued.

When Baizen lifted his head, and Chuck saw his face, he paused.

Where the hell was the deception, the calculation, the manipulation?

Bastard looked like he was fucking in love with her.

_The Koreana boasted of a restaurant that sold the largest, the tastiest, the most sinfully unhealthy golden prawns in the world. The dish was served on a mint blue plate, with sculpted vegetables arranged in a line shaping the circumference. _

_When Carter Baizen first visited South Korea, he backpacked his way to Pusan and trudged along the frozen streets, sat on dark brown mixtures of melting snow and cooling mud, and munched on protein bars to keep himself alive. On occasion, when he could manage to swindle bored young professionals in a game of poker, he treated himself to a hot meal. Often, the best he would take was hot water for a Styrofoam cup of spicy noodles._

_It was a life he enjoyed, and one that New York shunned. But he had been happy. And so he lived through the quiet disapproval he encountered whenever he returned._

_And because he was a Baizen, it was easy to be forgiven. _

_His wealth remained untouched, and not once had he asked for money._

_Not, at least, until he found Blair Waldorf._

_She had been exhausted, drained by the time he reached her. "Beautiful," he had called her once. "Beautiful," he had called her again. And yet when her lashes lowered and projected half moons on her cheeks, the beauty had changed from the surreal unreachable queen to the beauty of a fragile flower, petals crushed and torn. And Carter Baizen had always found beauty in the ugliest places and things. And there had been nothing in his life uglier than Blair Waldorf destroyed. _

_Even in their one night, when she was on the verge of self-destruction, she had a haughty arrogance about her that resonated in her voice._

_Blair Waldorf, in the South Korean winter, was a dark spot on an otherwise pristine snowy landscape._

"_Dad, I need five grand," he said, his phone on his ear, his eyes on Blair Waldorf sleeping with her cheek pressed against the cold glass of the minibus as they made their way to Seoul._

_Ridiculous. He was a twenty two year old heir who still needed to call his father for money. And yet all the years before it had never been issue. And suddenly, he needed to take charge of his own money._

"_Are you locked up anywhere, Carter?" his father asked. "Do you need a lawyer?"_

_Carter sighed. Of course those would be the questions. "I'm not in jail, dad. I need to check in to a hotel, and I don't have enough money on hand."_

_He had checked in to boarding houses, to small motels all over the world, and never needed his father's money._

"_Send me the money."_

"_What are you involved in?"_

_What was he involved in? Blair tossed in the comfortable seat and mewled in her sleep. And then she gasped, cried softly when she should have been finding rest. Carter stood from his seat and settled beside her. She found his warmth and pressed against him, her fingers clutched at the front of his shirt._

"_Please don't leave," he heard her sob. Her eyes were closed, but the tears on her cheeks were real. "I love you." Carter swallowed the knot in his throat, because the voice was far away, intended for someone in New York City. "I'm sorry."_

"_I found Blair Waldorf," he admitted._

_The name was key. His father probably feared all along he would come home with a nameless foreigner, and he would lose the single most important opportunity to establish connection with another family of old money and prestige._

"_The money will be in your account within an hour," his father assured him. _

_Carter nodded, then stopped when he realized idly that his father could not see him. "Thank you. Dad—"_

"_What is it, son?"_

"_Don't let anyone know."_

_Not Bass. Definitely not Bass._

_He checked them into separate rooms in the Koreana, in suites as lavishly equipped as any she was used to. He tossed his tattered backpack on the bed. For a moment he paused, looking at the image of the lush sheets creased by his worn bag. His crap ill suited the suite. He wondered if he should start buying new and better things._

_The golden prawns were waiting. It would be horribly overpriced for his taste. There were shrimp flavored spicy noodles that took up the empty space in his belly when he was hungry anyway. Still, he called for a table reservation and cleaned up as best he could. _

_He knocked on the door and called her name. When she did not answer, he took his copy of the key card from his pocket and slid it in the slot. The door opened with a click._

_The bathroom door was open. Carter made his way towards the bathroom to call her. "I've got the reservation placed, Blair."_

_Over dinner, he could ask her. Because the ugliness, though beautiful to him, would one day eat away inside her._

_He heard the muffled sobs. He had seen her before, naked under him, touched every part of her in a desperate effort to please her. She had stared at the ceiling even while he felt her muscles clenching in her orgasm. _

_If she did not look at her, she could imagine someone else._

_He barged inside the bathroom out of spite._

_Found dark drops of blood on the tiles. Little globular droplets raining down to make a puddle. Dripping from the hand tossed carelessly outside the tub._

_Her brown eyes were fixed on the doorway, but did not register his entrance. Carter strode inside and pulled her bare and wet out of the water. He slapped at her cheeks, yelled her name, but she was looking so far away._

"_He killed my baby, Carter," she whispered._

_Brown eyes, blue lips, red blood, pale, pale skin. She was dripping and straggly. The dark circles under her eyes were bruises of sleeplessness._

_Beautiful._

From the very top step at the center of the grand welcome home party, Carter stood tapping his champagne flute with a desert fork. Chuck stopped at the bottom step, looked up in horror as the events unfolded before his eyes. On cue, the small orchestra hired for the occasion shifted from the lively upbeat music to a strong of violins.

The older Baizen gestured to his guests. "I would like to thank you all for joining me in welcoming home my son. If I had two, I would call him the prodigal one." Polite laughter erupted, then just as subtly died. "But Carter is the only heir to my name, and as such whatever he does I will always welcome him home with open arms."

A jovial thanks, a pat on the back. The sight stung, only for the fact that he would never hear it from his own father.

"I was prepared for the worst. You are all aware of Carter's escapades, and have been so generous that you have turned a blind eye on them."

While his own little exploits, thought Chuck, were judged swiftly and harshly. What miracles old money could effect.

"Instead of the worst, nothing could be better than this—"

Carter raised Blair's hand to his lips, and whispered in her ear. She smiled. And then, Chuck felt his chest tighten when slowly her gaze shifted to him. Chuck at the bottom of the step. Her at the top. The fate had turned since that last night. The only thing missing was the puddle of blood around him, but he was certain she would take care of that too.

Everything happened in slow motion. Chuck watched in paralyzed fear as Carter bent on one knee. Around him were audible gasps. With Chuck, it was a silent endless scream. Carter drew a small velvet box from his coat pocket and held it up to her.

For one split second, that to him lasted for a lifetime, Blair's gaze moved from the diamond to him. And he could almost hear her curse at him.

And then the moment was over, and she was smiling down at Carter Baizen, nodding her head and saying "Yes." Over and over that the word grated on him. Carter slipped the ring on her finger, then stood up and caught her up in his arms as they sealed the deal with a kiss.

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: **Your sympathies lie on such different characters that I will take it as a measure of success. I did not want this to be one-sided. I am trying to portray them all as human, with flaws and insecurities and sins. I cannot tell you how much it means to me that a lot of you have formed sympathy for Carter, some for Chuck and a few for Blair.

**Part 5**

They had grown leaps and bounds. Between them they had closed gaps as wide as an ocean, and became better for it. Yet even as much as—and she would deny it to him but he knew it was true—Serena loved him now, her first loyalty—between her stepbrother and her best friend—would always be to Blair.

And he thanked her for it.

It was rare to find that kind of unwavering love in the Upper East Side.

Chuck had turned away abruptly from the horror of Carter Baizen's happiness. Oddly enough, he was comforted by that last hateful glare Blair had sent his way the moment that Carter held up his diamond to her. Had she avoided his gaze, had she kept her attention on that ridiculous ring, he would have been more hurt than he was that she looked at him at that precise moment with such stinging malice he wondered why he did not burst into flames.

But she did. And he saw it in her eyes.

That hatred.

It was almost as fiery as her passion on the first weeks since they reunited.

"_Chuck!" she squealed._

_He tossed her down onto the bed, sending her sprawling on the tight ironed sheets. He jumped on her, and his fingers were all over the buttons of her blouse. In his mouth he still had a stem of one of the pink roses he had given her._

"_This is insane," she said, giggling at the sight._

_Chuck spit out the flower and it dropped right beside her head. "Why is it so insane?" he asked, his lips searching for the pulsepoint behind her ear now._

_Blair shivered. "Because we just got back together," she gasped. She felt the hardness of him against her stomach, and her first instinct was to run up against him. "Chuck, we still need to talk about everything."_

_But her hands were on his belt. She then pushed down his pants and took his length in her hand, starting pumping him up and down. He lengthened, grew thicker in her grasp. _

_He hissed, then dropped his forehead against her chin. "What do you want to talk about?"_

_She helped his get rid of her underwear by kicking them off, then she wrapped one leg high above his hips. She wriggled her ass so that she would move lower on the bed. Guiding him, she opened herself up and bit her lower lip when he slid in inch by excruciating inch._

"_There were other—"_

"_No," he breathed against the sweat that formed on her neck. "No."_

_Chuck thrust in all the way, and her eyes squeezed tightly shut. "What?" she breathed, raising her hips up to meet him._

"_There weren't others. That time didn't exist," he told her._

_Blair opened her eyes, held his gaze as he pushed in and out of her. She blinked away her tears. "Everything's forgotten?"_

"_Already forgotten."_

"I don't like seeing you like this."

He turned around and saw his stepsister leaning against the doorway. It was the balcony he sought refuge in, where it was quiet, where no one could see him. Chuck nursed the glass of scotch in his hand and smoked as he mulled over that last look she gave him before she said 'yes.' It was that last hateful look that gave him hope.

"You don't have to stay and watch," he responded sarcastically.

But even then, when Serena stepped out into the balcony, he put out his cigarette. "Thanks," she murmured, placing a hand on her slightly swollen belly. She took a deep breath, and his eyes fell to the swell of her pregnancy.

She must have caught his uncomfortable stare, because Serena placed a hand on his arm. He raised his gaze to her. His lips thinned. "How's the little Humphrey?"

Serena shook his head. And it was not that she thought he did not care. Frankly speaking, he cared about the half of the kid that was Serena's and the half that was Humphrey's merely came with it.

"Didn't I tell you not to come?" Serena said, a gentler version of 'I told you so.'

He smirked, then leaned back against the railing. "And miss this?" he scoffed. "The happiest day of her life?"

It was not. He told her once that he knew her better than he knew himself. And he could tell from the moment he saw her breathe.

"You're a masochist," Serena observed. With a wry smile, she commented, "But so is she."

Chuck tossed back his drink and placed the glass on the balcony railing, watched as a dark ring spread around the bottom. "Have you talked to her?" he inquired, his voice quiet.

Serena sighed, then glanced back towards the party. He followed her gaze and spotted Blair in Carter's arms as they danced to music he did not hear. Baizen had always been an accomplished dancer. It was why the matrons adored him and competed for his services as escort to their progeny every year at Cotillion.

But Baizen paled in comparison to Blair.

Behind her smile there was a ghost. He wondered if Baizen saw it, or if it was only him who could tell. She laughed in Baizen's arms, threw her head back and exposed her gleaming throat.

The diamonds that frosted her neck were not his.

_She would forgive him anything. She loved him that much._

"Chuck, if she's happy, shouldn't that be all that matters?" asked Serena.

Instead of answering her, he placed his elbows on the railing and looked out at Manhattan. He licked his lips, and noticed Serena emulate his pose. His gaze landed to where her dress curved around her early pregnancy. He frowned, then pulled a new stick of cigarette from his case.

It was an effective dismissal.

Serena shook her head in exasperation and started walking back to the party. When she pulled open the door, he told her, "Six months."

Serena stopped at the doorway and looked at her stepbrother. "What is?"

Chuck swallowed, then sucked on the stick before puffing out the smoke. "My kid would have been about half a year old now." His voice dropped. "You ever wonder how I would be now if—"

"You would've been great," Serena interrupted.

He smirked, as if genuinely pleased by the statement. "Or I would've been disastrous." Like Bart. Probably. Bart was all he knew.

"She wouldn't have let you," Serena pointed out.

They talked about her as if she died that night. From what he learned, she might as well have.

"You'd be a playground dad, Chuck."

Did she think Carter would be any better? The man, after all, had been all games. At first, it had been a game, the man admitted to him a long time ago. Get back at Bass by sleeping with his girl. At first, that was what he said. And damn if it was not evident now, in the simple gesture of Baizen's hand on the small of her back, and the way he waved over a waiter to hand her some champagne, that this was not a game.

~o~o~o~o~

He followed her with his eyes until she vanished behind the bathroom door. Carter picked up his own flute of champagne and weaved his way through the crowd, greeting people he barely liked.

"Network," she had advised him before they arrived. "Establish relationships. You're going to need them when you take over."

If he had a choice, they would still be far away. This was a world he was not home in; and this was a home her world shattered over.

"Costa Rica," he answered her, and she understood.

A year out in the world, and there was nothing that they did not know about the other. Even the things she kept from him, for his sake, he knew. But it would not break them. Nothing could.

Blair nodded, and then proposed, "How about Buenos Aires?"

"Let's do both," he told her. He leaned down to kiss her, and her lips parted willingly under his. "Someday."

He was interrupted by a firm hand on his arm. Carter turned and saw the blonde glaring at him. He grinned at the sight, at the somber look on her face. The woman thought she was terrifying, when even angered she looked adorable.

"If you're looking for Blair, she went that way."

Her eyes narrowed, her jaw locked, and her chin thrust out. "I came for you," she pointed out.

Carter's smirk grew, and he sipped his champagne. "Not interested. I'm reformed, you know." The door to the balcony opened, and Carter glanced up. His smile vanished. "I'm reformed," he repeated.

"Have you told her about Santorini?" she prodded.

Carter clenched his fists. Since his paradise began one year ago, he had been terrified more times than he could count. If they knew how adept he was now at binding cuts, at resuscitation. But they would never know. No one would ever know her the way he did.

Somehow, the reminder of something so far away scared him far more than the first time he found her cut and bleeding in the tub.

"Jesus, Serena, it was years ago!" he exploded. Carter grabbed her arms and spat out, "Let it go."

"If she's going to marry you, you have to tell the truth," she insisted.

One year he had spent taking care of her, bringing her back from the brink over and over when memories of Bass sent her spiraling away. Surely whatever else she knew from the time before her would not matter.

Chuck Bass had started to make his way over. Before Chuck made it to them, another man emerged, grasped his wrist. "Let go of my wife."

"Dan," Serena urged softly, "it's okay. Let's go."

Carter gave him a stiff smile, then released Serena's wrist. The husband placed a hand around his wife's shoulders and led her away. Carter could not resist the urge, and threw at them, "You ran me away once. You're not going to do it again."

Serena stopped, turned her head. "It's the same secret, Carter."

He was afraid the stem of his champagne flute would snap. He placed down the drink. "Then I'll tell her," he allowed. "Tonight."

Carter saw that Chuck had been close enough to hear. The other man frowned at him. It was Serena who asked. "Do you love her?"

Carter scowled. Chuck responded, "Don't answer."

"I didn't intend to," Carter growled. "It's none of your business."

When Chuck's eyes left him, and turned to someone behind him, Carter already knew what to expect. He turned to see Blair making her way towards them. He reached out an open hand and she placed hers in his. He pulled her alongside him and faced the three.

He turned back to her to teasingly whisper, "Two against three."

Instead of a smile or an acknowledgment, Carter glimpsed the panic in her eyes right before she grasped his face in both of her hands and pulled him down for an openmouthed kiss. Her arms then looped around his neck. His hands settled on her waist.

When their lips parted, Carter looked down at her with a smile. But her gaze already flickered to where the three had been standing. And it was only Serena and her husband that remained.

Carter saw the moment Serena snapped. The blonde stalked towards his new fiancé, grabbed Blair's hand, and demanded, "I want to talk to you."

_He was so hurt._

_The pain in his eyes had almost suffocated her. Even when he slammed inside her over and over with no control, with as much force as he had, even while he trembled in his barely contained rage, it was still the look in his eyes that ripped her apart._

"_Chuck," was the first word out of her mouth when she woke up._

_She could barely remember. All she knew was that she had hurt him. So much._

_Her mother stood up and placed a soothing hand on her shoulder. _

"_Chuck," she rasped. Eleanor brought her a glass of water and helped her drink. "Mom, where's Chuck?" she demanded frantically._

"_He didn't mean to do what he did, Blair," her mother said gently._

_What he did._

"_He was very hurt," Eleanor continued._

_Blair could tell from the sheer passion behind his look._

"_I want to see him."_

"Fuck you, bitch," he had spat at her. But he had been hurt, so angry. He did not mean it, she told herself.

"_Nobody can contact him," Eleanor informed her._

"I'm leaving. For Monaco. For Bangkok. For Cairo. Wherever. I want you gone by the time I come back."

_She broke him._

_God, she broke him. She could tell from the sound of his voice, from his eyes. There was a ghost inside him. And all the love in the world could not fix him._

_Just like he said, he left her._

"_Blair, the police will want to talk to you. You were the only ones there. He pushed you, but it was an accident, wasn't it?"_

_It was plain on his face._

_He wished she was dead._

_She loved him._

"_Honey, why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?" Eleanor said gently._

_Her hand flew to her belly. She was going to tell him tonight._

"_It's gone, Blair."_

_Tears bloomed in her eyes. She shook her head. "No," she whispered. "Get me a doctor."_

"_Blair—"_

"_Get me a doctor!" she screamed. "Get me a doctor now."_

_The door slammed open, and Blair's tear-streaked face rose, expecting Chuck. Nate stood there and he raised his hand. "I'll get him."_

"_Honey," her mother's voice soothed. "Honey, take a deep breath."_

_But she was sobbing, sobbing so much she was almost laughing. The emotions bubbled inside her, spewing from her mouth. This was what it was like. She had heard of it before, never experienced it. But her throat was raw, and she could no longer breathe._

"_I'm sure he's very sorry."_

tbc


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: **Thank you for reading and supporting the part I posted after the ordeal. Lol. I am mostly recovered now, because I can remember C's face looking all victim-like at the locker. Hehe. And yes, thank you for the comments about the different characters in this fic and how they are portrayed. Sometimes you will not agree with them. And you will get more idea about their flaws and what they've done in the past and what they're doing in the present. Most of the things that happen of course may not endear them to you. But hopefully it would give you more insight to their motivations.

**Part 6**

If they had not loved each other so, once upon a time, a stranger would believe them to be they abhorred each other.

Chuck and Blair. Blair and Chuck.

No one ever hurt one more than the other.

And this. This is what they called love.

_When she fell asleep, it was to a world that had ended. Her baby was dead, and she had lost the man who swore she made him who he was._

_When she woke, it was to a world that was dark. The drapes were drawn, and the lights were off. She turned to the light streaming from the open door and caught her breath at the silhouette of him._

_He was not gone._

_Not yet._

_He had not abandoned her._

_Not yet._

_She reached out a hand, because what she had lost, only Chuck would understand. And yet, she said, "You killed my baby." But her hand was open, reaching for him, pleading with him to take it. "You killed my baby, Chuck." They were the only words she could say, when she wanted so much to apologize._

_And even while her words ripped his heart to shreds he still strode to her. He grasped her hand and raised it to his mouth, his kisses open mouthed, almost like he was devouring her in his apology. And then he leaned over her bead and captured her lips, plunged his tongue inside her mouth. He swallowed her sobs and squeezed his eyes tightly shut._

"_I hate you!" she whispered. _

_And she hated herself because she was sure he hated her too._

"_I'm sorry," he choked out._

_Maybe someday she would believe him. If they could work through everything that had come before, maybe they could work through this._

"_I'll be gone by tomorrow," he told her. "You can keep the suite."_

Serena regarded her friend with her brows drawn together, studying her as if she was some specimen under a microscope, and they were still in school. Blair met Serena's eyes, her jaw set as she kept her gaze on her friend's face. Serena's hand idly touched her abdomen, and Blair's eyes flickered to the swell, then snapped back to her face.

_Six months._

"B," she said gently, "it's been a long time."

Blair nodded. "It seems like a lifetime ago."

Then why was the hurt so fresh in her eyes, like it was yesterday?

Serena walked over to her, with her arms outstretched, anxious to wrap her arms around Blair. When they were young it was Blair who took care of her, Blair who kept her head on her shoulders so that Serena would make it home. And Blair almost seemed lost.

"How are you, Blair?"

When she drew closer, Blair flinched away from her, almost like she did not want to brush against her belly.

"I've got everything I wanted," Blair told her.

Serena bit her lip. "I'm going to have a baby, B. You'll be godmother, like we always planned."

Blair avoided her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Serena offered, "if this just dredges up old feelings."

"It was so long ago," Blair cut in. "I barely remember it."

Liar.

She knew Blair Waldorf, knew even without her or Carter telling her that Blair still woke up crying about it, running to the bathroom and throwing up everything she had lost.

"Carter is everything I could have wanted," Blair insisted. Serena was tempted, by her fierce loyalty to her stepbrother, to spill everything she knew about Carter Baizen. But there was a small smile on Blair's lips that kept her from speaking. "He was a revelation."

Diamonds gleamed on Blair's throat, more glittering than the necklace Chuck had given her on her seventeenth birthday, louder, more impressive. Carter Baizen lived as far away from the lifestyle of his parents as he could, so far that he had become a no-good swindler for the most part. Yet here he was, after years of his father calling him back to slowly learn to take the reins of their family fortune, clean, prepared, showering her best friend with the wealth that Carter had sworn off by principle.

Blair reached up to touch the diamonds on her throat, conscious of Serena's attention. "He's trying to be better."

Serena remembered Carter's words. Reformed. That's what Blair saw.

"He tries," Blair continued. "He won't sink back into a hole and drag me with him if it becomes difficult."

Unlike Chuck, thought Serena. They would never tell her, or anyone else, but she had suspected. One difficult problem, one challenge, one obstacle. There had to have been something that made him snap, that crumbled the castle they had built in the clouds.

"How do you know that?" Serena demanded. Because Blair could build fantasies out of thin air and eventually believe they were real.

"Because I've given him difficult," Blair answered.

Serena's eyes widened, then grabbed her friend's wrist, where sparkling diamonds glittered. Carter dressed her like a queen. "Blair, what is this?"

"Isn't it beautiful?" A pause. "We bought it in Florence."

In Florence there was a bridge that was lined with jewelers, dating back from the Renaissance and still in business to this day. Of course Carter would bring her to Florence. Of course Blair would wear a reminder that she had finally made it to Tuscany, with someone who adored her.

"We've been all over the world."

But Serena's attention was not on the diamonds, or the pale white gold. Serena pushed the bracelet up and revealed the dark line of a healing wound. Blair snatched her hand back. But Serena was quicker, always been better at sports to make up for being weaker in academics. Blair yelped when Serena's twisted her arm quickly and glared at the scar on her wrist.

Serena's eyes rose to Blair's face, while the other woman stared at her wrist. Blair tugged down at her bracelet to cover the discoloration.

"Are you happy?"

Because really, when Serena told Chuck that Blair's happiness was what mattered, she was telling the truth. She would step aside and keep Santorini a secret, be her maid of honor even, as long as Blair was happy.

"Yes!" Blair exclaimed.

"You're still so good at lying," Serena told her.

_He dragged her up, back up, out of the beautiful pink water where she rested. It had been warm, almost hot, and from the bottom of the tub it was almost like she was floating._

_And he forced her. Forced her to throw up the water, to breathe in air instead._

_Beautiful water. So pink because of her. Tendrils of red blood curled in the water and he abused her, slapping her cheeks and she sputtered and cursed. _

_She was almost asleep, almost finally happy._

_He gripped her wrist and wrapped a towel around the bleeding cut. He yelled into the phone that he had clutched between his shoulder and his ear. _

"_How many times, Blair?" he had yelled at her when he hung up the phone._

"_I hate you!" she screamed, as much as she could scream with her blood gushing. "I hate you."_

_But he pulled her tightly to him, whispered into her sodden hair. "Stop doing this. Please."_

"I gave him hell. So much hell," Blair shared.

For a heartbeat she could not tell if they were talking about Chuck, or about Carter. But it held true for both.

"And he's still here."

Carter.

Serena pushed, "He can give you everything you think you want, and you still end up like this."

Wanting to die every moment she had a chance.

Blair drew her wrist to her chest. Her diamonds hid the scars, and everyone else could only look at the frosted jewelry.

"He abandoned me," Blair told Serena. "I made one mistake, Serena. Do you know how many mistakes he's made?"

"You," Serena whispered in confusion. "It was your fault?"

"I stayed with him. I fought for him. One mistake and he was gone."

And her baby was a casualty to her one sin.

_It was the end._

_A thousand nights of passion, a million kisses, boundless skies clouded by the smoke of their rapid and explosive fireworks._

_She was too proud to beg, but once she found out she swore she would get him to marry her. No child of hers would be illegitimate, subject to scandal and to the complicated process of inheritance should anything untoward happen before Chuck married her._

_They had no plans, and it was what they loved. No Yale, no job, nothing in front of her now._

_Except for this._

"_Let's get married," she suggested at the dinner table._

_His eyebrows flew to up, and he smirked at her. "I thought we were going to live with no plans, no shackles, no nothing." _

"_I want to know that it's going somewhere," she confessed._

"_Fuck. This is what Nate always harped on about you." He pulled her chair towards him, the noise grating as it scraped the floor. "So you're already reneging on the deal?"_

_He grabbed her arms and drew her against him, kissing her lips._

"_Chuck, I want to get married," Blair emphasized as she pulled away. She frowned. "What else am I supposed to do?"_

_His face was flushed. "Is this an ultimatum?" Blair pursed her lips, then stuck out her chin. Chuck's eyes narrowed and he stalked out of the room. "I don't do arm twisting, Blair. If you're bored, find a hobby."_

_She had growled, thrown a pillow at his head. Blair locked the door of the bedroom and turned a deaf ear to his rapping on the door. _

_At one, he had stopped checking up on her. Blair gingerly made her way out of the room with a blanket in hand, ready to throw it over her arrogant boyfriend, whom she had supposed was asleep on the couch. Instead she found an empty living room. Her phone lit and vibrated on the coffee table. _

_Spotted._

_Of course, Chuck Bass would do what he does best. Blair deleted the message and the picture of Chuck surrounding himself with whores in Victrola._

_Blair stalked back inside the bedroom and tossed a few dresses on the bed before picking the one she wanted. She put on her short dress and called Serena._

"_Come on, S. Just a week left of your single life. We're going out."_

"_Can I bring Dan?" she heard Serena yell into the phone._

"_Of course not," Blair snapped. "It's for singles only."_

"_Nate?"_

"_Why not."_

_It was the end._

_Anticlimactic, given the fireworks with which it began, The night was full of laughter, old friends, and dancing, and the one thing Chuck wanted most of all—freedom. The night had it all._

_She should have known it was going to be the end. _

tbc


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: **Allow me to take a deep breath. Now you…

**Part 7**

There was one night that stood above all other nights in the horror of it all, in the regret that followed. Every one of them were creatures of the night. When others thrived on fantasy, theirs was a reality that could not be washed away by waking.

There was one night in each of their lives that they would soon rather have forgotten.

For Serena van der Woodsen, it was a youthful mistake. Sixteen years old, too young to realize better and so old that she was free to roam the world and waste herself. It was a night in Santorini that haunted her still. And try as she might, she would never get her husband to understand. Mistakes like the one she made were not part of Dan's every day, or once a year, of that chance in a lifetime.

Serena's one night of shame—only Carter Baizen could tell the tale.

And Carter would never tell—not at threat of his life, not in exchange for a million dollars. Even after he promised, Serena doubted that Carter would ever tell Blair.

For Carter, it was the night he found her for the first time, cut and bleeding from a wound she made herself. The sight of the dark hair floating in the pink water, while some of it stuck to her cheek, was terrifying. He had been on a plane that landed on water, been on a mountain trail that collapsed into a mudslide, nearly mauled by a wild animal in a cheap safari escapade.

Carter's one night he wished could fade away—only Blair Waldorf could tell the tale.

She wore diamonds upon diamonds, emeralds and sapphires and amethysts, in certain moods she pulled up gloves. Blair would never show them, never share. And even when Carter pleaded, she never once promised that it would not happen again.

For Blair, it would always be the night she had lost all sense and reason. The week before Serena's wedding, nursing hurt pride and soothing an angry heart took its toll on her control. She had stared down at the pictures of Chuck on her phone, with another woman's tongue down his throat, and she had sidled up against the next man that she knew should grace a Gossip Girl blast. She kissed him, asked him for a drink, then tossed the drink down so quickly. For a split second she regretted the action, then calmed herself with the fact that one glass should not hurt the baby. But Serena was gyrating on the dance floor, Nate's hands on her hips, and Blair was drunk within seconds, almost limp, passive and yielding to unfamiliar arms around her, pulling her up against a strange chest.

They found her when it was done, when her dress was in place, her hair polished, her make up on. They found her when her face was dry.

Her shamed recollection, only Chuck would eventually hear—in bed, in frantic whimpers, in those days they barely talked.

Blair's one night she wished she could change—only Chuck Bass could tell the tale. And he would never tell it well, from the bits and pieces he had gathered.

For Chuck, it was not surprising. It was a constant. The night was a companion of all the nights that succeeded it. He slept in bed with that night beside him, under his pillow, over him and pressing down until he almost could not breathe. It was anger, so much anger he wondered where the love had been. He had wanted to punish her, to hurt her, to strangle her, to melt inside her.

Chuck's one night he wished would stay with him forever—if only to hold close the last time he was ever buried himself inside her. Only Blair Waldorf could tell the tale, but she would not tell it well. It was almost like her brain had wiped away the memory.

Everyone told the tale.

Versions of the tale. Spun and wound into fascinating stories. Sometimes told well enough for him to believe.

_They had offered to take her to the door. Blair refused and gave the two an assuring smile. She could not wait one second longer. There was someone else on her, sticky, and warm, and the bile was rising in her throat until it almost drowned her. She made her way halfway through the lobby, feeling the wetness on her, her eyes becoming blurred._

_Someone had been there. She stumbled towards the bathroom, but found herself crouched, throwing up the liquid contents of her stomach on the marble floor._

"_Miss Waldorf, we'll call Mr Bass," Sarah, the pretty receptionist who greeted her and Chuck every morning, assured her._

_Blair shook her head. "He's not home." He was in Victrola, together with his whores, hellbent on forgetting that she was angling for a ring._

_Sarah straightened, and motioned to the doorman. "Mr Bass arrived a couple of hours ago."_

_She could not even remember what happened two hours ago. Blair allowed Sarah to lead her to the large armchairs in the lobby where guests waited. She settled back with a sigh and closed her eyes. A few minutes later, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped in surprise. Her eyes flew open._

_He was looking down at her, with that same stubborn set of his jaw. But his eyes were warm, concerned. "Let's get you to bed."_

_His arm was around her waist as they made their way to the elevator. They passed by the spot she had made a mess on, where two people were hard at work cleaning up._

_He opened the door of the suite for her, and Blair blinked at the sight of a set table for two, of candles and pink roses._

"_Chuck," she breathed._

"_Never mind," he said quietly._

_But she made her way to the dinner table and picked up one of the roses from the vase. This was how tonight was supposed to be. She lowered the rose on the plate, then turned to him._

_It was going to be better. It was going to work._

_She could forget about everything that happened tonight if he could do the same. And they could count until from now. Blair rose on tiptoes and placed her hands on his shoulders. She pressed a kiss on his lips, which he took and returned until she was breathless._

"_I need to get out of these clothes. I need to shower. I need to get the night off me," she told him. "And then we can do it like you planned."_

_Where the girls from Victrola figured in, she would not ask. _

_If he asked about the man in the bar, she could not answer anyway._

_She stepped into the shower and stripped off her dress. Blair looked down at the faint bruises on her thighs. She rested her head against the tile, felt the tears trickle down her cheeks, then reached towards the shower knob._

_And his hand closed over hers, brought her knuckles to his lips. He pressed up behind her and she felt him hard and naked and straining between the cheeks of her ass._

"_Chuck, wait!" she gasped._

_And then she cried out, because his fingers were delving inside her._

_Where she was wet._

_Dirty._

_Slowly, he lowered his head until his lips almost touched her ear. "Fuck you," he said, his voice strangled. "One mistake. You couldn't let me explain. You couldn't let me make it up to you."_

_She shook her head, wanted to turn around but he gripped her waist so tightly. "You don't understand," she cried._

_And she felt them. They were hot, and they came fast. One after another that it was almost like it was raining. They fell on her back, between her shoulders. But she could not see. He would not let her see._

"_Falling in love with you," he choked out, "was the worst decision of my life."_

_And he could not have hurt her more than if he took a fistful of her hair and slammed her head against the tiles._

"_I'll see you in Serena's wedding."_

_And then he was gone. Blair turned and hurried after him, but he had hurriedly thrown on his clothes and stalked out of the suite._

"Ask him about Santorini," Serena whispered into her ear when they said goodbye for the night.

Her fiancé strolled out of the bathroom patting his face with a towel. When he saw her sitting on the edge of the bed, he gave her a lopsided smile and offered his hand. She smiled, then took his hand. Carter pulled her up to stand, then unzipped the back of her dress.

"Raise your arms."

He pulled the dress away and set it aside for the maid. She stood in her slip, and she turned around to tell him, "Thank you, Carter."

Because there was just so much that it was almost overwhelming. If she listed them all down, she wondered if she would owe the man for life.

But then again, she was going to marry him. That should be close enough.

"I love you," he said. He bent down to kiss her.

Before their lips met, she replied, "Tell me about Santorini."

Carter paused. "Serena," he concluded.

"Yes, Serena." It was better if he knew from the start what truth she expected, what truth she could just as easily know if he did not tell.

He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, rested his elbows on his knees. He ran his fingers through his hair. "I was young," he began. "It shouldn't make a difference to us, Blair." He had always shown her she could lean on him, depend on his strength. Once, he promised her he would carry her. And those days, in those strange lands, the words were exactly what she needed.

Not today.

Today she was in Manhattan. And she had Serena.

She had Serena, at the very least.

"It does to me," Blair insisted. She kept her voice firm as she continued, "I've done things I regret. Had them done to me. They always come back to haunt you, even when you think it shouldn't matter."

Because when there was love, everything else should have paled and fallen away.

She was a ghost.

And she was haunting them all.

Carter snagged her hand as she passed by him. He clutched it tightly, held it against his chin. "Promise me that I won't lose you over this."

"Promises get broken, Carter. Don't believe in them."

_Serena laughed like he knew she had never laughed before. She certainly did not have this much fun with her weird brother, who always hung about looking like he had the heaviest burden in the world. And he was quite sure Serena did not have any fun at all with the stuffy, straight-laced girl she hung around with._

_Just sixteen and the girl was a vixen in bed. Willing to try anything with one snort._

_Man, Carter couldn't wait to give her some E. If she was wild now, she was going to bounce from the walls on E._

"_Are you tired, Carter?" Serena teased, hopping up on him on the bed and trailing her long blonde hair over his abdomen. Carter hissed when the taunting hair played around his penis._

"_Bitch," he said in endearment, making her grin proudly to elicit such passionate response._

"_I am a bitch," Serena agreed. And then she started laughing. "Not as much as my best friend though."_

_Carter set her aside, then rolled to his side to reach for his jeans. Serena draped her body along his back, urging him to come back to her. Horny bitch, didn't he say? He fished for a small case of breath mints, then grabbed her hand, let one fall onto her palm._

"_Is my breath that bad?"_

_He smirked, shook his head, then pushed the white pill into her mouth. Serena sputtered, then swallowed. She grimaced at swallowing the pill dry. "What is it?"_

"_It's a special blend you can only find in Santorini." Carter picked up a glass of water, and Serena reached eagerly for it. He wagged his finger at her. "Not for you." He dropped two of the pills in the water. "We have a visitor," he informed her._

_Carter placed the glass on the nightstand, then rolled on top of Serena. Her face was flushed, her breathing shallow. "What do you feel?" he asked._

"_Oh God!" she exclaimed. "My skin is burning."_

_He ran his tongue from his nipple to the hollow in her throat. "How does that feel?"_

_Her eyes rolled back in her head. "Carter, you're amazing. I love Santorini!" _

_He gripped the backs of her knees then pulled apart her legs to rest between her thighs. Carter probed against her. Serena thrust up her hips. "Now, now, now."_

_He teased, then got up off her and walked to the door. Serena called to him, but he gestured for her to wait. And then he pulled a young girl into the room. She looked to Serena about fifteen, and she was crying._

"_Carter, who's that?" Serena gasped, pulling up her discarded blouse over her breasts. _

"_She's our visitor." Carter picked up the glass of water and handed it to the girl. The girl grabbed the glass and chugged the water to calm her nerves. _

"_I didn't sign up for this!" she protested as Carter pulled the reluctant girl towards the bed where Serena was. _

_He pushed the girl on the bed, then settled down above the girl while her struggles slowly ceased. "See, Serena. She wants it as much as you do." He pushed the girl's shorts down over her hips. _

Carter licked his lips. In the middle of the story, and he could not even look at Blair.

"The police came the next day to my room. Serena was still there. She told the police that the girl wanted it, initiated it."

Her best friend. Her fiancé.

It was all in the past.

But some things from the past you never forget. It never lets itself be forgotten.

"The girl contacted me through my father's lawyer a few months later, demanding I do something about the fact that she was pregnant."

Blair froze. She pulled her hand away.

Finally, Carter met her eyes. "I sent her money to get rid of it."

And then, without any reason she thought, her own hand rose to cover her empty belly. At the movement, he rose, tried to hold her. Blair flinched, strode to the other side of the room as far from him as she could.

"That's not who I am anymore," he repeated, pleading with her.

Blair threw open the closet doors and grabbed the first dress she could. She threw it over her head. "I need to get out of here. Don't follow me, Carter. Just leave me alone." Blair picked up a few bills, then headed out the door.

tbc


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: **Thank you for all your thoughts on the last part. Much appreciated. As always, I value your comments.

**Part 8**

When Carter found her in South Korea, the entire world was an unbroken paleness of snow white and gentle flesh. The trees surrounding them had been heavy with ice, and even the pond was hard like a rock. Huddled under her white coat, her skin had been paler than usual, with a tinge of blue. And he had worn a cream coat, his neck wrapped in a flesh scarf. His hair was matted down with the cold, and flakes of snow threaded in and out of the strands.

In the night, pitch black but glowing with the winter snow, Blair stared at the still pond. It was not nearly as frozen as the pond in Oedo, where she had first discovered some desire inside her to break the surface and die. Still, the pond was cold enough that there were no ducks in sight. The ducks must be sleeping.

She should be sleeping. It was late, and the park was unsafe in the morning let alone at night.

She should be sleeping, but Carter was in the bed they shared.

Since she left the Baizen home, Blair had the strange feeling of someone watching her. She glanced around her, fearful of a stranger who wanted money, or jewelry. She could give away anything really, except, she wondered if she was held up could she surrender her bracelet. Then the stranger could see her scars she made.

When she looked behind her, she saw several feet away, Chuck Bass stood—a sharp contrast of color against the backdrop of snow. He stood in his black coat, with a red and yellow scarf hugging his neck. His head was low, but he watched her with intent, focused eyes. His hands were in his pockets. His breathing made clouds of vapor in the air around him.

Immediately, she stood, straightened her stance. "Have you been following me?"

He did not answer, merely watched her move. Blair wrapped her arms around herself.

"Of course," she said. "Once a stalker—"

He held up his hand, a signal for silence. Chuck walked over towards her and stopped when he was close enough to be heard. "I know that Carter finally told you about Santorini."

Her eyes narrowed; her lips thinned. "What, Chuck? Did you blackmail him into telling me?"

Chuck shook his head, drew closer. His proximity was uncomfortable to her. It was terrifying. She stepped back once. "But I wanted to make sure you'll be alright." He sighed. "Come on. You can't stay in Central Park this late."

He laid a gloved hand on her arm. Blair held her breath, shuddered at the cold leather on her skin. Even then, it was the warmest she had felt against her body. "Please don't touch me."

Reluctantly, he drew his hand away. "Let me take you to Serena's."

She shook her head. "She and Carter—"

"Then let me take you to the penthouse," Chuck offered.

Abandoned when Eleanor and Cyrus moved away. The same bedroom where once she had slept with Nate, and several times with Chuck Bass. It was the last place she needed.

"Then my suite," he said last.

Blair turned on her heel and stalked away from him. She heard him follow closely behind her.

"Blair," Chuck called out. In the silence of the night the homeless turned and watched curiously. They created enough noise to call attention. "Don't run away. It's not safe."

She slowed her pace, allowed him to catch up. No one chased after her, Carter had teased her once. There was no need to escape so fast.

"You're not in any state to stay in a hotel room by yourself," Chuck told her quietly.

She stopped, turned to him. Her eyes rested on the snow on his shoulders. He had been standing outside so long. She followed his fingers with her eyes as he reached out to brush the snow from her hair. Chuck removed his coat and offered it to her.

"Then I'll go home to Carter," she said, her jaw set.

"You can go home to him?"

It was difficult to keep her eyes on him, difficult and unsettling. She turned her attention to the skyline, to trace with her gaze the lit corners of the building. "I won't give up. He made one mistake, and it was stupid and awful. It makes my stomach turn," she confessed. "But I can't just give up. That's what relationships entail."

'You gave up,' she wanted to scream. 'One mistake and you gave up.'

Her fingers were trembling now, and she did not notice until she followed his gaze, saw his gloved hands reach for her hands. He moved to grasp her hand, and she immediately drew them away.

"I'm still in love with you," he said.

She closed her eyes, hung her head, allowed the words to wash over her. She wanted to hear the words for so long, imagined that when she heard them she would disintegrate into a puddle of relief.

"I dreamed you would say that. And I thought it would matter to me," she admitted. "You're not what I need, Chuck. Not anymore." Blair took a deep breath. "I think you never were."

The look in his eyes would haunt her the way their faceless child did. "Do you love me?"

And as honestly as she could, she answered, "Sometimes I hate you."

As much as she hated herself for starting it all. Right before the blade cut through her skin. That split second she hated him most of all. That split second she hated herself enough to let herself remember just how much she loved him.

Chuck nodded curtly. "I'll take you home," he told her.

"I told you, Chuck—"

"To Carter," he added.

Quietly, they made their way out of the park, walking side by side with an immeasurable distance between them. Between Chuck and Blair, it was colder than snow, yet even then their fingers brushed—his gloved hand and her bare ones covered by the too-long sleeves of his coat. The limo pulled up as they emerged into the street.

He opened the door for her. When she moved to climb in, he pulled her hand and drew her close. And she allowed him, even took a deep breath to smell the scent still so familiar. He laid his forehead on hers, pulled her hand to his lips to lay and kiss in her palm.

She closed her eyes.

A hundred breaths. Just like this.

His breath warm on her cheeks. Her breath cold and shallow, making his scarf move like it were living.

One hundred full breaths, one after the other. All silence except for the air and their heartbeats.

"Don't turn me into a cheater," she whispered on the one hundred first. "That's what you hated me for."

And he nodded, without words, climbed after her into the backseat of the limo. He did not say them, but Blair could recount in her head all the times they had been there together. The limo stopped, as he had promised, outside Carter's. She did not turn to thank him, did not say goodbye. She climbed out of the vehicle and entered the building.

The limo did not leave at once. Blair stood outside the doors and waited. When it did not roll away, she walked back towards the street. Chuck rolled down the window and said, "Get in."

The limo.

Carter's house.

Blair lowered her lashes and turned her back on Chuck. She paused, then slowly removed his coat.

"Keep it."

But she thrust the coat to him. "We don't need this right now." He took the coat and held it up to his nose. Blair fled towards the building.

She entered the bedroom, expecting Carter to be out like the light. Instead she found him sitting on the edge of the bed, his eyes bloodshot. He looked up at her apprehensively when she stepped inside. His hands fisted and unfisted on his thighs. When she took another step inside, he let out a shuddering breath.

Blair made her way to him, then knelt in front of him. His face was questioning. She looped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a kiss.

Carter's lips opened, gently caressed hers as he returned her kiss. And then his fingers buried in her hair. "You're cold," he whispered.

He drew them both up to their feet. His hands moved to hemline of her dress and started to pull it off her. Blair arched her back when his hot lips moved to her neck. She waited patiently when he started divesting himself of his clothes. Blair lay back in bed, opened her legs so that Carter could lay between them. He kept his eyes on hers. He hooked his arms under her knees, opened her to him and thrust inside. Blair gasped, clutched at his shoulders and moaned out loud.

"Tell me what to do. I'll make it better."

Deeper, he thrust, and her head hit the headboard. He muttered an apology, then flexed his hips to push further, reach farther.

She screamed.

"Faster?" he gasped.

Blair bit her lower lip, nodded her head. She grasped the headboard to take him in with more control. Carter latched his lips on her breast. Sweat blossomed on his forehead, and Blair could see the tension coiling in his back with his effort.

"Deeper? Tell me," he pleaded. "I'll do it."

She gasped, taking him inside her. He was more tonight, bigger, better, harder. He overwhelmed her senses. Blair drew closer, and he changed his pace, drew it out for longer.

In, out. Over and over. And she exploded once, but he did not stop, drove her to the edge and back before slowing and taking her on the same ride again. She was hoarse from crying, her body limp, trembling from her climax. Carter pulled out of her and moved down her body, kissing a trail over her moist stomach, dipping his tongue in her navel.

She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her, and all she could see in his eyes was a request. Finally, she nodded.

And she was on her, lapping up himself and her. She twisted on the bed, her hips rising and falling as his tongue soothed her. Her fingers dug into the sheets as he did everything she could want, moved by feel, based his ministrations on each gasp, and cry. And she came, from his kisses alone.

She was still trembling when he finished. Blair turned on her side with her back to him. She felt his arms wrap around hers, his hardness still full and tight against her.

She closed her eyes. Sleep should come. She was exhausted, from the party, from the first sight of Chuck Bass, from a foray into the park, from sex.

A half hour later, even with the lulling kisses that Carter pressed on her nape, she was wide awake.

"It's not going to work," she said. Carter stiffened behind her. "I can picture you with that girl crying for you to stop."

His arms tightened around her. "She wasn't crying."

Out loud, she thought.

And then, finally. "I can picture a baby in a jar."

"Don't," he pleaded.

"Carter," Blair said gently, "I tried. It's over."

"I'll do anything you ask," he assured her, his voice frantic, and she wanted to turn around and hold him. Because everything he had said was right. Everything was bound by logic, and even then, she could not deny what she felt. "Blair, I've done everything right. It can't be my past that breaks us up. That's not fair."

Things of the past should never affect their present. That was his defense. Much good that did her then.

"Life hasn't ever been fair, has it?"

_One week to stew over the horrifying sensation of another man on her. He had almost poured acid over his fingers. The nightmares came and went, and he found himself still crying out in the morning when he woke. She had fucked someone else, the moment they faced a challenge._

_She wanted marriage, and he had gone out to prove he did not need it. Alcohol and women. But watching strangers gyrate to the addictive rhythm of burlesque music had only made him remember a sixteen turning on seventeen girl whose honey hips still made up his dreams. _

_When his usual fare stuck their tongues down his throat, it had terrified him. When he closed his eyes, he pictured Blair angry, or sad, or even exasperated at the sight. _

_Bachelor trapped. He needed to make it up to her, make the night as unforgettable as the movies she watched over and over again._

_He had the dinner prepared, swung by his father's office for the most valuable heirloom he ever received._

_If he was going to be imprisoned, then he would surround himself with a gilded cage. His mother's ring belonged to no one else—only Blair._

_And she had fucked another man, came home with the evidence. Even then, in the week apart, while he cursed her to hell, he knew. By the end of the wedding, she would wear his mother's ring. And then they could spend a lifetime making up for the week she ripped him apart._

_She looked at him longingly, from the distance between them in the ceremony. She stood beside Serena, in the cream gown that was all fluff and lace and taffeta. Blair Waldorf looked almost like a bride. And he hated her so much he swore he loved her, just because hate came threaded in with love._

_They were at the reception when Chuck decided to confront her. He left the reception for a smoke. Chuck made his way to the smoking lounge of the Palace. He stumbled across Jack with one of Bass' more powerful board members. Chuck snarled, "Trying again?"_

_Jack smirked at his nephew, then laid a hand on his shoulder. "I never quit until I get what I want, you know."_

"_What does that mean?"_

_Jack grinned, glanced behind Chuck. "You're alone. I'm disappointed." The older man arched an eyebrow. "How's the tight little number that hung around you like a nagging wife? Ask her."_

"_Blair would never touch you," Chuck drawled. But she fucked someone else. Just the week before._

"_On the contrary," Jack answered. "She touched me so well I get hard every time I remember."_

"_Liar."_

_Jack shook his head, then patted his nephew. "Here's a tip, little Bass. When you want a girl, you don't do—" Jack searched for words. When he could find none, he shrugged. "—Everything you did the last time I was here. She was delicious. Every bit of her. I can't wait to try it again."_

_Chuck drew back his fist and slammed it into his uncle's gut._

tbc


	9. Chapter 9

**Part 9**

From Nate, to whatever Chuck had been, to Marcus, to that undefined thing that existed with Chuck, back to Nate, to that hell and heaven that was her and Chuck together, then to Carter—

Barely had time to breathe. Barely had time to know herself.

Barely anything.

Barely herself.

Everything she was, everything had been his.

One by one, she unclasped the diamond bracelets from her wrist. She felt rather than saw Carter. Still, she continued the quiet, measured movement, placing the pieces of jewelry on the dark surface to sparkle in the light.

"Take them."

But she bared her wrist, with its ugly mar visible on her skin. She answered him, "I'm leaving this relationship with only as much as I brought with me."

She had been nothing—less than that—when she came to Carter.

"Nothing," she said.

"You brought me everything that matters," he told her.

"I'm done lying." Blair shook her head. "I won't pretend I was more than—" She cut herself off, took a deep breath. She and Carter both knew—in all the world, there was no one else who could understand the story better than the two of them. "You knew me at my worst."

She passed by him on the way out the door, and she knew before he did that he would place his hands on her waist, plead with her. "Stay," he begged. "You've made me better than I've ever been."

"I know," she said carefully. "But you'll be the best with someone who can love you back."

His hands fell away from her waist. "If I told you about Santorini before we came back, would you have stayed with me?"

Slowly, she nodded her head, confirming for both of them what they suspected, but would never say aloud. "But I would have hated myself even more every day."

"I love you, Blair."

So did Chuck. So did Nate, in his own way. "Love doesn't solve everything." She raised herself up on the tips of her toes, placed a kiss on his cheek. Then, with only a small bag in hand, because however it ended she knew Carter would send her whatever else of hers she left, she walked down the corridor towards the stairs. Mr and Mrs Baizen stood outside their bedroom door, watching her leave. Mrs Baizen stepped forward to talk to her, but Blair saw the moment the older woman saw her son, because she stepped away.

She made her way down the stairs, heard Carter call her name. She looked up, saw him at the top of the steps.

"You loved me too," he told her.

Not once had she told him, and it was what he had chosen to believe. If this was the goodbye he wanted—

He perfectly deserved it.

"Alright, Carter," she said at last.

And then, she was out in the world, and it was cold in New York. The streets were lit with artificial lights, and she found her way down the street, ignoring the cabs and the one or two people who snapped her picture walking away. The small bag, heavy for lugging around the city, grew lighter in her grip the more she walked.

Blair Waldorf found herself standing outside the Palace. There were hundreds of other hotels in the city, but now, there would be no place like home. The sound of her heels on the marble floor was familiar, comforting. She walked up to the reception desk and licked her lips. Blair fished for her credit card, then placed it on a table.

"I need a room."

"I'd be happy to book one for you, Miss Waldorf." The girl gave her a cool smile, then checked her computer. "How many—"

"It's just for me. One," she cut in.

The girl nodded. Blair noticed the moment the girl's eyebrows rose. She slid the credit card back to Blair. "We already have a room on hold for you."

Chuck.

Blair took the card and placed it back in her wallet. The girl handed her a key card. "It's 2815."

Hers and Chuck's. It was the room they shared one summer, the home they had built together. "Look," Blair explained tiredly, "I'm not interested in sharing a room."

"Miss Waldorf, the room hasn't been occupied for a year."

And so it was that Blair slid the card into the same slot, stepped into the same suite, walked on the same padded carpet she had once walked before. She thanked the bell boy who dropped the bag at her doorstep. The door swung closed, and she found herself standing in the living area. Her feet led her to the kitchen, and she tentatively reached a hand towards the one mug that still sat upended in the sink.

It had cost two measly dollars, but it had the ironed on picture of her and Chuck with their lips locked in a kiss. One of their afternoons slumming it, and he had complained about the cheap destinations, then demanded a mug when they passed by the stall.

If she had it last year, she would have shattered it into a million pieces.

"_This is insane. I won't do it," he said stubbornly._

_His face was red, and Blair almost expected that he would stomp his foot in protest. "Suck it up, Chuck," she replied with a giggle. "I gave you your stupid mug."_

_Chuck handled the mug closer, as if the item could hear her insult. It had taken them a long time to take a picture that he thought deserved to be immortalized on the side of cheap ceramic. She had smiled, frowned, made faces at the camera, until Chuck finally decided to himself to pull her unexpectedly into a kiss._

_And that had been plastered on the mug._

"_So now you want me to do porn?"_

_Blair arched her eyebrow at her boyfriend. "Stop pretending to be modest," she told him. "And I know this isn't your definition of porn. I've seen the DVDs inside the brown paper bags, Bass."_

_Chuck smirked, but the arrogant expression faded when they reached the booth. _

"_I want you on my nightshirt."_

_Chuck scowled. "You don't wear nightshirts, Waldorf."_

"_I would if you were on it." Half-naked, she told him._

"_You're doing this to screw with me."_

_Blair gave him a big grin. "Do this and you can do anything you want tonight. While I'm wearing my new shirt of course."_

Blair shook away the memories but walked to the bedroom and opened the closet, found the oversized shirt that she never did get a chance to wear. She shook it ad revealed the ridiculous pose she had Chuck do, ironed on to the shirt in only his dress pants.

The picture on the wall taunted her.

One year, and the world could turn upside down. One year, and everything else could change.

Except this.

"_Was the waiting intolerable?"_

"_But you know by now I'd wait forever for you, Waldorf."_

Blair lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. He had been here, she knew. Even without anyone telling her, she could tell the same way she could tell the moment he was gone in the Baizen's party. All around her she could smell him still, like he had lain on the same sheets so much more recently than one year ago.

From Carter's bed to his.

She shot up from the bed. Her skin was on fire, afire. She breathed quickly, but she could never get enough air. Blair picked up the phone and called reception.

"Get me a car to take me to the airport," she said.

"I'll schedule one for you, Miss Waldorf. What time do you want to leave?"

She closed her eyes, felt the tracks of her tears cooling on her cheeks. "Book me the first flight out of here, and then you tell me what time I'm leaving," she answered.

"Miss Waldorf, we can do that for you." The Palace always had the best service out of all the hotels she had stayed in. Carter certainly made sure they stayed in places better than the ones he stayed in before she joined him in his travels. "What's the destination?"

"Wherever the first international flight out is going," she answered thickly.

She hung up the phone. Her eyes rose to the picture frame that they had hung together. On their bed, in their home, with memories of that one summer around her—

"I hate you," she whispered.

"_I think you've already forgiven me."_

_He had been certain, assured, confident in what they had._

"_Because you told me you'd stand by me through the darkest, and the worst. I know you forgave me before I even said I'm sorry."_

Chuck strode into the hotel restaurant and spotted Carter taking a glass from the bar. Chuck straightened involuntarily, needing to be taller, needing to appear more powerful, needing to be richer and better. When the other man turned around, and Chuck spotted the red-rimmed eyes and the dry lips, his stance relaxed.

Carter saw him and nodded towards the corner booth. Chuck gestured to the waiter to bring his usual order, so they would not need to be disrupted earlier than necessary.

"I was about to throw my phone to the trash. It had to be broken," Chuck drawled, "because I highly doubted Carter Baizen would text me saying he needs my help."

Carter threw back his drink, then motioned for another one. "Blair left me," he admitted.

Just hours ago, before they parted, Chuck had been sure that Blair would stay with the other man. She had told him so herself. No giving up, she had told him. She would give Carter the chance that Chuck did not give her. Now this—

"You're more of a fool than I thought you were if you honestly think I would help you get Blair back."

Carter rested his head back on the cushioned backrest of the booth. He locked his jaw. Chuck saw him reach inside his pocket, then place the strands of white gold and diamond bracelets on the table between them. He pushed them towards Chuck.

"She isn't with me," he told Carter. For the small relief he saw in Carter's eyes, Chuck wondered why he had bothered to deny it. He should have told the asshole that Blair was sleeping in his bed now, exhausted from the hours he had spent making her feel welcome. "And if she were, I can get her better jewelry, more than anything you've gotten her."

"Give them to her anyway. She's naked without them."

Chuck narrowed his eyes. "I don't need you to tell me about Blair Waldorf. For the record, she loves necklaces more than bracelets. I know her better than I know myself. You fucking stole her from under my nose when I asked for your help tracking her down." Chuck snarled at the other man. "I was killing myself trying to figure out where she was. And then when I got desperate enough to ask for your help, you stabbed me in the back."

Carter looked at the glittering jewelry that contrasted with the dark tabletop. He idly touched the hard rocks. "You don't know her anymore. She's different now. But I know her."

From Carter to Chuck, it was the harshest insult that could ever be said.

"What the hell do you want?" Chuck cut in. "Your message said you need my help. Spill it so I can shoot it down and laugh in your face."

Carter grasped his own shoulder, squeezed it. "If you find her first, you figure out why she's been hiding her wrists with dozens of these." Chuck's eyes fell again to the damned bracelets. "And then watch out. Don't leave her alone. Not even for a second. I learned my lesson the hard way."

"_I know you love me."_

"_How do you know I haven't stopped?"_

_He pressed against her and he looked down at her, so close to him, that he only needed to whisper for her to hear. "Because if you love me half—no, a quarter—as much as I love you, that would be impossible."_

"Good evening, Mr Bass."

Chuck nodded towards the girl. "Candice, call the limo for me."

"Of course, sir. Should I cancel Miss Waldorf's car service then?"

Chuck stopped in his tracks. His head swiveled and he looked at the girl. "I'm sorry. Can you repeat that?"

The girl nodded, smiled. Trained for politeness, untiring of it like the new employee that she was. "Will you be taking Miss Waldorf in the limo, sir? It's time for her car service to take her to the airport."

He strode to the girl's desk. "Give me the room key."

Holding the plastic in his hand, Chuck raced to the elevator. He ran towards the room they once shared, and rapped on the door. When there was no answer, he slid the key into the slot. The door opened. Chuck saw the mug that had been placed down inches from where he had last seen it, saw the closet door slightly ajar. His eyes flew to the wall.

There was an empty, discolored square patch of wall where their photo used to be.

tbc


	10. Chapter 10

**Part 10**

She would never smile like that again. It was clear to her the moment she saw the picture that still hung on the wall, in the suite that no one lived in. Such a waste, because once upon a time they had been happy within those walls.

Blair looked up at the monitor, heard the almost inaudible whisper in a voice that used to be so certain, so arrogant.

"Don't leave."

She turned to look at him like she expected him, and it was odd to her that this time she almost hoped that he would come. It was sadistic even, because not for a moment did she ever consider that she would stay. Masochistic because she wanted to. Better because she acknowledged that she needed not to.

"I won't make this hard," she told him. Blair wanted to reach out and push his hair out of his eyes. He needed to get a haircut. He had only been as unkempt after he had lost his father. It was not him, looking like that. He was brash and suave and self-assured. He needed to be.

"Then don't leave. Let's try again," he urged her.

"Chuck," she answered, weary now, just because all she wanted to do was step back into his embrace.

Forget the past.

"I'm not the same," she finished.

And he heard it from Carter, his own assessment, his own belief that she had became more Carter's than Chuck's. It was the one thing he would not believe. No matter what she became, she would always be the girl he knew.

With a sharp release of breath, he responded, "Neither am I." One year he had mourned for a baby; one year he had grieved for Blair. "I'll show you."

She licked her lips, and what killed him was that he could not see hesitation in her eyes. Her gaze did not waver, like she was settled on a decision that not even Chuck Bass could change.

"I'll say goodbye," she said slowly, stepping towards him, leaning close and placing a soft whisper of a kiss on his cheek. "That's all I can do."

Her fragrance surrounded him, and it was not even memory. Flesh, and body, and skin, and bones, and she was all over him even when she was still a foot away. When she came close, and he felt the brush of her lips, he told her, "The way you love me, Blair," recalling to her mind all the words they had exchanged—which she rendered empty now—when they were young, "apologies shouldn't be necessary."

She pulled away, looked into his eyes, then slowly, and to his relief, nodded in acknowledgement. "You're right." Even when she wondered if he could hurt her, there was no need for apologies. The way she loved him—

No one else could ever understand.

His dreams showed him, even while they morphed and became possessed by other people's stories, and she had to know it. "I couldn't ever have hurt you. The way I love you—" he trailed off.

And she wrapped her arms around herself, because suddenly the admission was too much, too late, too irrelevant. "I have to go, Chuck. I don't want the plane to leave without me."

His face morphed into disbelief, confusion. And then he demanded, "Did I miss anything?" She shook her head. "You know we never stopped. Not even when we were half a world away."

"I know," she said softly. "But I need to be somewhere other than here."

"Tell me you were lying in the park. I want to hear it from you."

The portrait was in her bag, and the girl in the picture was so far from who she was now. The boy in the photograph was happy, conceited at the knowledge that he had her. And it was far from who he was now. But she would take it with her, across the distance she needed to have.

"You said it yourself, Chuck. It's impossible to stop."

"Then if you love me, and I love you, why the hell can't you give us a chance?" he demanded.

She sucked in a tremulous breath. "Because tonight," she answered, "I realized that I love you." She looked up at the digital clock overhead, and stepped away.

"This is insane, Blair. What are you doing?"

She raised her arm, pulled up her sleeve, showed him the scars she had made without the jewelry that adored and hid them. Three pairs of eyes had seen them before.

To Carter, they were the mark of his greatest failure. When he tried over time to make her forget, and still she ripped herself open and sobbed that Chuck had killed her baby.

To Serena, it had been a preview of the shadows behind the luxurious curtains. It had told her that behind the makeup, the beautiful dresses, the contented smiles, there was only rotting flesh.

And to Blair—

It was salvation. It was cleansing. It was escape.

And now, with Chuck's eyes on them, it was humiliation.

"I told myself you killed the baby, Chuck. It was so easy to believe. And as long as I blamed you, I didn't have to face it. But I knew," she confessed, "deep down, it was me. I hate myself for lashing out at you, for getting fucked by someone else just because of one argument. And I loved you, and I couldn't blame you. Even if you had pushed me, I would've forgiven you and not forgiven myself."

And the flood of words, to him, was a forceful waterfall. He could not breath while it washed over him. Instead, he grasped her arm. "What?"

"You can't be with me. I can't even love myself."

"Blair, you can't blame your—"

"I love you. And I can't let you love someone who hates herself like this." She glared at the scars, knew that one day she could walk into a doctor's office and find them miraculously gone. Cheated away. And one day she could pretend they were never there.

So ugly.

Disgusting.

He raised her wrist, brought it up to his lips. She flinched at the sight of his lips moving over her scars. She swallowed when he met her eyes. And then she felt the warm liquid, and they were raindrops on her arm.

"Don't do this," she pleaded. Because when he was devastated, she was gone.

"I want a family with you," he told her. God, he made it so hard. His words were everything she had wanted then, everything that would have made her happy.

"I want to pick up where we left off," he said. Chuck pressed her palm on his cheek. Chuck should not cry in front of her, but she still felt the wetness on her skin. "We don't have a choice, Blair. The moment we fell in love, that was it. I can try to live another life, but it will always come back to you."

It was what she had done, and only found herself despising every moment she was happy with Carter.

Slowly, she shook her head. "I can't stay here. Chuck, please," she begged, "I need time to figure out what I've become." She cleared her throat. "I can't have been Nate's Blair, and then your Blair, and then Carter's. I'm not any of those girls."

"How can it be wrong?" Because he would happily be known as Blair's Chuck for as long as he lived. And he would be proud.

Blair sighed, then closed her eyes. And her tears fell unabashedly down her cheeks. "I can't be here. I'd be lost. I have to go, Chuck."

~o~o~o~o~

A long time ago, when she first fled from the horror of losing a baby, when she needed to escape from Chuck Bass, when all she wanted was to be alone in the world, Blair Waldorf found herself in the cold landscape of Oedo Island. In the Botanical Gardens, she sat amidst the white snow-laden cedar trees and placed her feet on the thin ice that crusted the lake.

A little weight, and the surface could crack. And sometimes she wondered how it would feel if she fell into the freezing water.

Her heart was frozen even more, and she doubted it would make a difference.

In the forests of Laos they were hidden from the world. She and Carter had backpacked their way across jungles and rice fields and she had been so completely different from the New Yorker that she was that it was easy to hide behind sweat and an almost permanent tan. In rusty, rickety trains and buses she slept to wake up to an expanse of more green than she had ever seen before.

The planet was humid, and she breathing was so difficult.

Sometimes she wondered if the air would be ever be so hot and thick that she would suffocate trying to gasp for breath.

But she had been dead so long, she doubted it would make a difference.

Six months after she had left Chuck at the airport in New York, Blair found herself traveling alone in a place where every knowledgeable traveler knew a woman must never venture out by herself. But Blair Waldorf had always been more intelligent than most, and her time with Nate had given her a fierce desire for independence. Marcus had given her a trust in the world that she had not had before. From Carter, she picked up the street smarts she needed to gather enough courage for the journey.

And from Chuck—the destination.

It was not a suggestion, and if one asked, Chuck would likely not know the place. He had hardly paid attention in school after all, and probably forgot about the place the moment he stepped out of the classroom.

The travel was punishing, and the three hour ride from the airport, on dangerous roads in a vehicle that was falling apart, made for a more elusive goal. But if she could get there, when the sun was about to set, and the dome could capture the many colors of the sunset, she would it would be worth it.

She was covered from head to toe, the cloth more to protect her body from the punishing glare of the sun and the biting air than for disguise. It was almost the end of the day when she climbed out of the vehicle on unsteady legs and trekked her way to stand before the structure.

And when she looked up, and saw the dim light of the sky reflected on the dome, she felt tears rise in her eyes. The Yamuna river threw crystalline reflections up at the jeweled walls. The setting sun eventually gave way to a full moon, and still she did move. And truly, she was not even surprised when warm arms wrapped around her form from behind, and she felt his lips brush against her covered ear.

For every city, every country, every one of her destinations since she had walked away from him, he had turned up without fail.

Once upon a time he had let her go, his own guilt and mourning forcing them to give the other time and space. This time, when she turned, he was there.

It was only here, in front of the grandest mausoleum in the entire world, that he came up to her and held her.

"Did you find what you're looking for?" he asked softly, aware of the tears, of the one moment the last six months when she broke.

She stood in front of the final resting place of a queen that the world remembered for the way her king had worshipped her, for the children that she bore who became rulers of the large continent. In the trip, the guide spoke about the precious stones embedded in the marble, of the treasures that came from all parts of the world. But no one spoke about the queen. No one could say what she had been like. The greatest description they could say was that she loved the king.

And her mausoleum was a spectacle.

She had traveled the world, searched every place she could think of, wondered when she would recognize what it was that could answer her questions. And every time she turned, she would find him, a short distance away, quietly watching.

Waiting.

And she was so very tired.

Tonight, in front of the Taj Mahal, under a full moon, he finally came up to her and wrapped his arms around her. And she could not forget the baby, or the time in between now and then. Half a year and he was with her.

She turned around in his arms, closed her eyes when his lips searched for her forehead. He would probably think it was the place, or the story behind the destination.

In a place where afternoon were hotter than anywhere else in the world, and evening could be colder. In a place that was built to honor a dead queen remembered for loving a man who was almost always at war. In a place she had not been to before, in all her travels with or without Chuck.

In a place where she had lost hope in figuring out what it was she wanted, and found comfort in his embrace.

"I found it," she whispered.

He had been waiting for her all this time.

fin


End file.
